Providing sufficient energy to everybody is a prerequisite for civilized human life: the relationship between human development index and per capita primary energy consumption suggests that at least 4 kW per person consumption is required for people to achieve a high level of development sustaining food, health, education and wealth [1, 2]. This sums up to nearly 30 TW, if all seven billion people of the Earth were to demand this, twice the current world power consumption (15 TW in 2018 [3]). Energy production distribution and conversion is thus big business: global net imports for fossil fuels reached around 1.9 trillion $ in 2015 (according to the World Trade Organization (WTO) 2017) [4]. The corresponding conversion machines belong to the largest human-made infrastructures ever built. The currently largest oil refinery, the Jamnagar Refinery, India, has a capacity of 1.24 million barrels of oil per day, and covers over 30 km2 of land. To sustain the world with food, nitrogen fertilization is obligatory. The world energy consumption of the Haber–Bosch process, in which the fertilizer precursor NH3 is produced, is about 1%–2%. A typical ammonia production plant produces up to 3000 t NH3 per day [5] in reactors of up to 20 m length [6] (see also figure 12.1). The production yield and efficiency
hinge on details of atomistic reactions on the catalysts' surfaces as well as on macroscopic transport phenomena in the reactor [5]. Accordingly, a multitude of concepts, techniques, and analysis/characterization methods covering length scales from nm to several meters are used to support and improve current technology
(figure 12.1). Ammonia can be stored safely by absorption in ionic salts. This application is a good example, where neutron imaging can help improving the engineering of the storage device [7].