Wonderful World of Nitrogen
In my recent search for an interesting chemical topic I was not finding too much, and then I came across the chemical element called nitrogen. Within a few short minutes I had found more interesting information about nitrogen than I had found on all the other elements combined. As with most elements there is the good and the bad, I will discuss both aspects of nitrogen starting with the bad and ending on a good note. When I found out about this paper I was under the impression that its main purpose was to educate me about an unfamiliar subject. I feel that this paper has educated me with every intent pointing toward personal growth. The chemical element nitrogen is a colorless, odorless gas. Its chemical symbol is N, its atomic number is 7, and its atomic weight is 14.0067. Nitrogen was discovered independently in 1772 by Daniel Rutherford in Scotland, Joseph Priestly and Henry Cavendish in England, and Carl Scheele in Sweden. French chemist Antoine Lavoiser proved that nitrogen was in fact an element. Nitrogen comes from the Greek words nitron and genes, which had a meaning of "salt-peter producing". Nitrogen occurs quite often in nature as being the most abundant uncombined ele
ment on earth. The air we breathe everyday is 78.06% nitrogen gas by volume (75.5% by weight). Nitrogen also occurs in the gases from volcanoes, springs, and mines. The largest nitrogen containing material is sodium nitrate, which is also called Chile saltpeter and Chile niter. In an industrial setting over 25 million tons of nitrogen are recovered every year from liquefied air in a process known as fractional distillation. "The process to manufacture liquid nitrogen in large quantities can be environmentally very friendly, even if fossil fuels are used to generate the electric power required. The exhaust gases produced by burning fossil fuels in a power plant contain not only carbon dioxide and gaseous pollutants, but also all the nitrogen from that used in combustion. By feeding these exhaust gases to the nitrogen liquefaction plant, the carbon dioxide and other undesirable products of combustion can be condensed and separated in the process of chilling the nitrogen, and thus no pollutants need to be released to the atmosphere by the power plant. The sequestered carbon dioxide and pollutants could be injected into depleted gas and oil wells, deep mine shafts, deep ocean sub-duction zones, and other repositories from which they will not diffuse back into the atmosphere, or they could be chemically processed into useful or inert substances. Consequently, the implementation of a large fleet of liquid nitrogen vehicles could have much greater environmental benefits than just reducing urban air pollution as desired by current zero-emission vehicle mandates." Nitrogen oxides are released into the air and the ozone when fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gases are burned. Oddly enough, the nitrogen oxides do not come from t
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Approximate Word count = 1179
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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