Since the mid-1900s, humans have been exerting an ever-increasing impact on the global nitrogen cycle. Human activities, such as making fertilizers and burning fossil fuels, have significantly ...

Taking inspiration from how nature — including lightning — produces ammonia, a UB-led team has developed a reactor that produces the chemical commodity from nitrogen in the air and water, without any ...

Taking inspiration from how nature —including lightning — produces ammonia, a team led by the University at Buffalo has developed a reactor that produces the chemical commodity from nitrogen ...

But nitrogen molecules in the air consist of two tightly bound nitrogen atoms. Only when these atoms are separated will they react with other elements and create forms of nitrogen useful to life ...

It's through a process called nitrogen fixation. Earth's atmosphere is mostly comprised of nitrogen. The remainder is 21% oxygen, roughly 1% argon and other trace amounts of gases.

At the beginning of the XXᵉ century, two chemists succeeded in fixing nitrogen in the air. Their invention saw the birth of intensive agriculture, gravely disrupting the nitrogen cycle.

The lightning from thunderstorms is one possible origin. This produces a relatively small amount of nitrates today but might have been important early in Earth’s history. The famous Miller-Urey ...

A new study suggests that cloud-to-ground lightning might have been key in creating the building blocks essential for life on Earth from nitrogen and carbon. In Earth's early days, comets ...

There are three explanations for why any particular bolt of lightning is a given color, but they all come back to one thing, atmospheric chemistry. Earth's atmosphere is 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen ...

Li’s team is currently in the process of scaling up their reactor and are exploring both a startup and partnerships with industry to help commercialize it. UB’s Technology Transfer Office has filed a ...