## Why do we need fertilizers & how [[Ammonia]] plays a role Nowadays, in order to feed the growing population (8 billion) and the consequentially growing farm animals population (more than 70 billion [1]), we inevitably need to produce a huge amount of fertilizer. Farming relies on a range of innovations to boost crop yields - genetically modified crops, AI driven agriculture **Plants absorb more nitrogen than any other elemen**t, making it possibly agriculture’s most important nutrient. Having **an adequate supply of a chemical compound where nitrogen occurs in high concentration**: ammonia is thus essential. ## How we get [[Ammonia]] Currently ammonia is produced by means of a high energy-consuming method called the [[Haber-Bosch process]], developed in the early 1900s by Fritz Haber and later modified to become an industrial process by Carl Bosch. Since then, this process did not change significantly, and it takes so much energy to be considered responsible for **around 2% of the global CO₂ emissions** [2]_._ It is then easy to understand how great the discovery of a new production process would be for humankind, both for climate and economy. Some signs of progress involving quantum computing in order to replace the [[Haber-Bosch process]] in the production chain have been done in the last years [3], but these algorithms still require way too many qubits and around 10 million quantum operations, so they are clearly not prone to work on currently available NISQ devices and then they still represent a long-term application. ## Green Ammonia Ammonia is best known as a fertilizer, but could also be used as fuel, potentially making it one of the best decarbonization solutions for the world’s ships. There are several options for creating green ammonia, but they rely on similar processes. For example, green hydrogen can be used as a feedstock, or the carbon dioxide emissions that are caused by the process can be captured and stored. However, there are other potential approaches, such as **nitrogenase bioelectrocatalysis**, which is how nitrogen fixation works naturally when plants take nitrogen gas directly from the air and nitrogenase enzymes catalyze its conversion into ammonia. This method is attractive because it can be done at room temperature and at 1 bar pressure, compared with 500°C at high pressure using Haber-Bosch, which consumes large amounts of energy (in the form of natural gas). Innovation has reached a stage where it might be possible to replicate nitrogen fixation artificially, but only if we can overcome challenges such as enzyme stability, oxygen sensitivity, and low rates of ammonia production by nitrogenase. The concept works in the lab but not at scale. Quantum computing can help simulate the **process of enhancing the stability of the enzyme, protecting it from oxygen and improving the rate of ammonia production by nitrogenase.** ## Which are the largest companies producing [[Ammonia]]? By market cap: [source](https://companiesmarketcap.com/fertilizer/largest-companies-by-market-cap/) 1. Nutrien 2. Wesfarmers 3. CF Industries 4. Saudi Arabian Fertilizer Company 5. The Mosaic Company ---- [1] [Opinion | We Will Look Back on This Age of Cruelty to Animals in Horror — The New York Times (nytimes.com)](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/opinion/factory-farming-animals.html) [2] [Current and future role of Haber–Bosch ammonia in a carbon-free energy landscape — Energy & Environmental Science (RSC Publishing)](https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2020/ee/c9ee02873k#cit16) [3] [Accuracy and Resource Estimations for Quantum Chemistry on a Near-term Quantum Computer](https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.06814) #quantum