Reddit reviews Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy
We found 2 Reddit comments about Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
> to fertilizers
Most of the energy and hydrogen in nitrogen fixation from air comes from natural gas.
> post peak world is horrifying on that front
You can patch up a lot on short notice with 'victory gardens'. Human urine has about exactly the amount of nitrogen and phosphate to grow enough calories to feed that human. Some plants can fix nitrogen on their own (legumes) and some single-cell algae can do that, too. Biological-intensive methods do not use any synthetic fertilizer, and are a sustainable practice.
Poor countries will get creamed as staples price will go up, of course.
> the real nightmare is chemical replacement
While oil and gas is terribly convenient, you can in principle synthesize everything from scratch, if you have enough (very) cheap energy and the according (very big, very expensive, and very slow to build) facilities.
A quite good (I intensely disagree with Olah et al. about utility of nuclear energy sources) read is http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527324224/
A useful resource is http://www.withouthotair.com/ (but caveat, as the author doesn't clearly distinguish between heat Watts and electrical Watts, which results in an overall slightly pessimistic numbers).
This is great. In the "make fuel from air" section of my climatecolab contest entry I advocate several ideas like this, including the Green Freedom plan mentioned in the presentation. Other options include STEP and methanol. Hadn't come across the ammonia idea.
I can't edit the entry right now while judges pick finalists, but I've added an ammonia link in the proposal comments..