Laron D. Burrows

Building better ammonia production | Chemical Engineer PhD, Founder & CEO

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

Keep your heart 3stacks.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

I’m literally on a train back to Boston.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

Be in the room.

NYC #climateweek

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

We've built our food system on ammonia, then decided not to invest in making more. That's the actual risk.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

Ammonia runs the world.
It hasn't fundamentally changed in over 100 years.
Time to reinvent production. #ammonia

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

What's the value of the chemicals that could be made from curtailed energy in the US?
Asking for a friend...

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

Your old PPA just expired.

Those electrons aren't worth much anymore, but if you convert those electrons into chemicals.....

You just started a new industry.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

At the end of the day, PV=nRT.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

Read about SpaceX's early sloshing problem and thought: that's just a chemical engineering problem.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

When the tide goes out this far, the few companies wearing swimsuits get noticed fast.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

SpaceX rewired how engineers actually think about constraints.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

I'm a Scott Folger kind of chemical engineer.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

If you're scaling a new chemical process, I want to hear it.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

Bootstrapping hard tech pre-seed forces clarity: which lever matters most? Usually it's not the one you thought. $1M teaches you fast.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

Most founders scatter.

Some ideas demand you ignore everything else for 3 years straight.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

Most chemicals today are made the way they were 50 years ago. Call me crazy, but we could rebuild them from first principles.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

Smaller, distributed production isn't romantic. It's math.
The question is whether anyone's willing to solve it.

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

The $5T chemical industry operates with one business model.
Build massive production plants to reduce unit economics and produce cheap product. Then let low cost distribution networks get the product to the customer.
But what happens when distribution costs rise?

[Laron D. Burrows @Reality__Cheque]

If you can produce chemicals at smaller scale, smaller footprint, closer to customer, the centralized model's advantage collapses.
What matters is the final cost to the customer, not the production cost.