the.com/ammonia
the smell that cleans your house and could fertilize half the planet's dinner
means A pungent, colorless gas made of nitrogen and hydrogen (NH₃), dissolved in water to make a sharp-smelling cleaner and used industrially to make fertilizers and explosives.
from The name traces back to the Temple of Ammon (Amun) in ancient Egypt, near which a salt called 'sal ammoniac' — ammonium chloride — was gathered, reputedly from the dung and droppings of animals around the shrine. The Latin 'sal ammoniacus' meant 'salt of Ammon,' and when chemists later isolated the sharp gas from such salts, they named it ammonia, carrying the desert god's name into the cleaning cupboard.
- crop fuel
- feeds nearly half of humanity via fertilizer
- war birth
- its synthesis was perfected to make explosives
- cosmic stink
- detected in Jupiter's clouds and interstellar gas
- green fuel
- burns carbon-free, eyed for cargo ships
- body made
- your liver produces it converting protein waste
haber-bosch process — industrial synthesis producing ~500 million tons annually, developed 1909
anhydrous ammonia fertilizer — accounts for ~80% of global ammonia use in agriculture
ammonia refrigeration — industrial cooling systems in meat plants and ice rinks worldwide