Time Odyssey

Oceanic dead zonesare vast areas of water ways that have become essentially dead due to oxygen deprivation.  The process goes something like this: At the exit of river basins fertilizer run off which is heavily laces with nitrates increase phytoplankton production. While such phytoplankton are normally a good thing, being a source of food for other sea creatures and generating oxygen, on balance such blooms are more massive than the surrounding ecosystem can accommodate. When the excess phytoplankton died off they sink to the bottom and are decomposed by bacteria which use oxygen and expel CO₂ in the process. The net result is that nothing can survive as all the oxygen is used in the decomposition process.

So relating this back to yesterday. If one of the principle problems with the health of our oceans is fertilizer runoff, and specifically nitrogen enriched fertilizers which are fairly typical, then removal of nitriates from the water systems will create a healthier environment by allowing phytoplankton levels to drop back to more sustainable levels.

Now obviously there are major issues involved here as we are talking about essentially scrubbing rivers before they exit in the oceans which is a monumental task. It is impractical? Not really – it would represent a mega project of astounding proportions but its not as if projects of such size haven’t been done in the past. It is simply a question of will. Having said that, there are more than likely going to be much cheaper and easier alternatives that sticking what amounts to a giant fish filter into the middle of a major river system (CURSE YOU, AQUASCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!!!!!!)

Regardless – one of the key challenges is the fact that a number of the reactions required to make something like this real are sort of all over the map. So for example,

Air (N₂) + Natural Gas (CH₄) = Anhydrous ammonia (NH₃), and

Carbon dioxide (C0₂) + Anhydrous ammonia (2NH₃) = Urea [CO(NH₂)₂] + Water

but, to get Polyacrylonitrile we need

 Natural Gas (3CH₄) + Ammonia (NH₃) + O₂ = Polyacrylonitrile (C₃H₃N) + Water

This suggest that whatever process is used as part of the intermediate steps is going to be have to be highly controlled and will be highly subject to contamination as our reactive agents have the potential to produce unwanted side effects at different parts of the process. The other thing that I’m thinking of now that I’m looking at this in a bit more detail is the fact that Urea seems to be a common product of ammonia and carbon dioxide. I’m wondering whether the reverse reaction is a simple process or not as that would give us two of our key components in Polyacrylonitrile production. – K