Talk:Ammonia production/Draft

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Wikipedia has an article of the same title

I was the original creator of the Wikipedia article and its main contributor. For creation here, I reworded and reformatted the article quite a bit. I also added a new section and an image to it. - Milton Beychok 18:06, 25 February 2008 (CST)

Comment on the introduction

Milton, my take on the introduction was that it jumps right in to the fact of industrial ammonia production without indicating why we doit, to wit:

"There are literally dozens of large-scale ammonia production plants worldwide, some of which produce as much as 2,000 to 3,000 tons per day of liquid ammonia."

If I may suggest an alternative introductory paragraph that loses nothing from your original:

Because of its critical use predominantly as a base for supplying usable nitrogen for agricultural productivity, ammonia is one of the most abundant of inorganic chemicals manufactured by industrial chemists. Worldwide ammonia production in 2004 was 109,000,000 metric tons. There are literally dozens of large-scale ammonia production plants throughout the industrial world, some of which produce as much as 2,000 to 3,000 tons per day of ammonia in liquid form. China produced 28.4% of the worldwide production followed by India with 8.6%, Russia with 8.4%, and the United States with 8.2%. Without such massive production, our agriculturally-dependent civilization would face serious challenges.

--Anthony.Sebastian 17:07, 23 July 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for your suggestions, Anthony. I have revised the introduction to incorporate your suggestions, but still retain the article title in the first sentence. I also updated the worldwide production figures using the latest data for 2006 (rather than the previous data for 2004). I will await any further suggestions you may make when you have the time. - Milton Beychok 18:36, 23 July 2008 (CDT)