Nitricity
Ep. 3 decarbonizing fertilizerNitricity develops distributed, on-site systems, which produce nitrogen fertilizer from the air, water, and renewable electricity - allowing farms to efficiently fertilize themselves.
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Why We Made this Film
We would only be able to support about a third of our current global population without the production of nitrogen fertilizer. This technology has been fundamental to global population growth over the last century. Yet the production process contributes roughly 6% of annual GHG emissions: for every 1lb of fertilizer put into the soil today, as many as 8lbs of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions are released into the sky.
But in the basement of a lab at Stanford, a handful of Ph.D. students are developing a solution. Their company, Nitricity, produces fertilizer from simply air, water, and renewable electricity, which makes it feasible to create onsite at farms as well. Eliminating transportation emissions and potential product loss is a stark difference from the current hyper-centralized means of production. Farms that convert to Nitricity systems can mitigate as much as 80% of the CO2eq emissions associated with nitrogen fertilizer.
The Haber-Bosch is considered one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. Could this Palo Alto startup be its successor?
