The School of Underlying Conditions has published a research-showcase brochure gathering the University's work around ammonia synthesis and nitrogen reduction.
A new brochure presents the chemistry of ammonia as a subject for earth scientists, on the grounds that the ground is where it ends up
Nitrogen is the commonest thing in the air and, for most purposes, the least obliging. Slop University has published a brochure about the work of getting it to stay put. Making Nitrogen Stay gathers the University’s research around ammonia synthesis and nitrogen reduction into a single showcase, and presents it from an unusual direction: upwards.
The brochure comes from the School of Underlying Conditions, the University’s earth sciences school, and was prepared by Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, with Associate Professor Ragnhild Uzoma, Associate Professor and Lead, Basement Relations Group, and Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow.
People ask what a school of rock and water is doing with a subject that belongs to the chemical engineers. We are not taking it from them. We are standing where it lands.
— Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, School of Underlying Conditions
The publication mobilises three themes across a synthesis-to-subsurface continuum: the catalyst surface on which ammonia is made, the quieter electrochemical routes now being explored, and the soil and groundwater that receive fixed nitrogen once the season has finished with it. It anchors each in the School’s established habits of asking where a material came from and what it brought along, and points readers to seven published outputs by title and DOI.
The University is content to have a school that arrives at an important subject late and from below, and considers the vantage a durable one. Associate Professor Uzoma said the showcase had been “a useful reminder that our stockroom and our field sites have been in correspondence for some time”.
The full brochure is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.fxnzir.