瓶子里的闪电可以让农民生产出环保的氨肥料
Ammonia production is responsible for about one percent of greenhouse gas emissions, although this could be underestimated. That may not sound like much, but we worry a lot about the emissions of air travel, which isn’t that much larger. It's unlikely that nearly 8 billion people can live in this world without ammonia-based fertilizers, however, so a better way has to be found. Australian scientists think they're close.
氨气生产约占温室气体排放的1%，尽管这一数字可能被低估。这听起来可能不多，但我们非常担心航空旅行的排放，它并没有那么大。然而，近80亿人不可能在没有氨肥料的情况下生活在这个世界上，所以必须找到更好的方法。澳大利亚科学家认为它们已经接近了。
Ammonia (NH3) production currently relies on the Haber-Bosch process – which won the Nobel Prize in 1918 – but is badly in need of replacing. The process uses immense amounts of energy and relies on hydrogen, usually produced from methane, some of which leaks. “Green ammonia” can be made using renewable energy and electrolysis of water, but is currently very expensive.
目前氨(NH3)的生产依赖于获得1918年诺贝尔奖的哈伯-博施法，但它急需被取代。这一过程需要消耗大量能源，并依赖于氢，而氢通常由甲烷产生，其中一些甲烷会泄漏。“绿色氨”可以使用可再生能源和电解水，但目前非常昂贵。
Stephen Luntz
“The problem with using electricity to convert nitrogen directly to ammonia is that nitrogen is so stable it is very hard to get it to dissolve in water,” Dr Emma Lovell of the University of New South Wales told IFLScience. “So we took a step back and thought about how nature does it.”
新南威尔士大学的艾玛·洛维尔博士告诉IFLScience:“用电将氮直接转化为氨的问题是，氮非常稳定，很难在水中溶解。”“所以我们退后一步，思考大自然是如何做到这一点的。”
Lightning turns some of the atmosphere into NOx molecules, which then get transformed into other compounds, allowing this essential element to make up part of every living thing. Lovell and colleagues started thinking about ways to replicate this.
闪电将大气中的一些物质转化为氮氧化物分子，氮氧化物分子再转化为其他化合物，使这种基本元素成为构成所有生物的组成部分。洛弗尔和他的同事开始思考如何复制这种现象。
Presumably, others have had the same idea, but Lovell thinks previous work has failed as "Expertise in plasma physics and electrochemistry don't overlap much. We were just lucky that one person working in each got a coffee together and things moved on from there."
据推测，其他人也有同样的想法，但洛维尔认为之前的工作失败了，因为“等离子体物理和电化学的专业知识没有太多重叠。”幸运的是，我们每个部门都有一个人一起喝了杯咖啡，然后事情就继续发展了。”
In Energy and Environmental Science Lovell and other team members describe a plasma bubble column reactor that first converts atmospheric nitrogen into NOx like lightning, and then electrolyzes water to make hydrogen that displaces the oxygen.
在《能源与环境科学》中，洛弗尔和其他团队成员描述了一种等离子体泡柱反应堆，它首先像闪电一样将大气中的氮转化为氮氧化物，然后电解水，生成取代氧的氢。
Having started with a very inefficient process, Lovell told IFLScience that energy use per gram of ammonia produced has come down 100-fold. She thinks further two or three-fold improvements are possible, which might finally knock Haber-Bosch off its perch.
从一个非常低效的过程开始，洛维尔告诉IFLScience，生产每克氨的能量消耗下降了100倍。她认为进一步的两到三倍的改进是可能的，这可能最终将哈伯-博世击败。
In addition to the environmental costs of producing ammonia, existing methods require giant manufacturing plants for efficiency, which then means shipping the product worldwide. The world was reminded of the dangers when 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored at Beirut port exploded last year, leaving 300,000 homeless and at least 204 dead.
除了生产氨的环境成本外，现有的方法还需要大型制造工厂来提高效率，这就意味着要将产品运往世界各地。去年，储存在贝鲁特港口的3000吨硝酸铵肥料发生爆炸，造成30万人无家可归，至少204人死亡，这提醒了世界各国注意危险。
Besides not requiring fossil fuels, Lovell's method can operate at a variety of scales. “The technology could be used to produce ammonia directly on site and on demand...which means we negate the need for storage and transport,” Lovell said in a statement. The team is working on making a design that could run on-farm using nothing but air, water, and a few solar panels.
除了不需要化石燃料，洛弗尔的方法可以在各种规模下运作。“该技术可用于现场直接生产氨，并可按需生产。这意味着我们不需要储存和运输，”洛弗尔在一份声明中说。该团队正在设计一种可以只用空气、水和一些太阳能板在农场运行的设计。
NOx gasses are both locally toxic and greenhouse polluting, but Lovell told IFLScience she doubts the closed system they are building will let any leak before conversion to ammonia.
诺克斯气体既具有局部毒性，又有温室污染，但洛维尔告诉IFLScience，她怀疑他们正在建造的封闭系统在转化为氨之前会让任何泄漏。
Solving one of the world's great environmental challenges might be enough for most people, but Lovell and her colleagues think they can help with an even larger one. Hydrogen carries many hopes as a way to store and transport energy from places rich in sunlight and wind to those where it is lacking. Senior author Professor Rose Amal noted, “Hydrogen is very light, so you need a lot of space to store it, otherwise you have to compress or liquify it, but liquid ammonia actually stores more hydrogen than liquid hydrogen itself.”
对大多数人来说，解决世界上最大的环境挑战之一可能就足够了，但洛弗尔和她的同事认为，他们可以帮助解决更大的挑战。作为一种从阳光和风多的地方储存和运输能量到阳光匮乏的地方的方式，氢带来了许多希望。资深作家罗斯·阿迈勒教授指出:“氢非常轻，所以你需要很大的空间来储存它，否则你必须压缩或液化它，但液氨实际上比液态氢储存更多的氢。”
Recent advances in the easy splitting of ammonia to nitrogen and hydrogen raise the possibility ammonia transport could solve many of hydrogen’s problems.
近年来，由于氨易于分解为氮和氢，使氨运输解决许多氢的问题成为可能。
