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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Our society is in need of ammonia more than ever.

Chemical fertilizers, plastic, fibers, pharmaceuticals, refrigerants in heat pumps, and even explosives all use ammonia as raw material. Moreover, ammonia has been suggested as a hydrogen carrier recently because of its high hydrogen content.

In the Haber-Bosch process, which is the main method of ammonia synthesis, nitrogen reacts with hydrogen using a metal catalyst to produce ammonia. However, this industrial process is conducted at 200 atm and high reaction temperatures of nearly 500°C. Additionally, ammonia production requires using much natural gas, so scientists have been looking for alternative methods to sustainably synthesize ammonia at low temperature.

In a recent study, researchers from Waseda University and Nippon Shokubai Co. Ltd. achieved a highly efficient ammonia synthesis at low temperature, with the highest yield ever reported.

"By applying an electric field to the catalyst used in our experiment, we accomplished an efficient, small-scale process for ammonia synthesis under very mild conditions," says Professor Yasushi Sekine of Waseda University. "Using this new method, we can collect highly pure ammonia as compressed liquid and open doors to developing on-demand ammonia production plants that run on renewable energy."

[...] The new technique also addresses obstacles in conventional ammonia synthesis, such as hydrogen poisoning of Ru catalysts and delay in nitrogen dissociation. Furthermore, the research results suggest that smaller-scale, more dispersed ammonia production could be realized, and building highly-efficient ammonia plants that run on renewable energy will become possible. Such ammonia plants are expected to produce 10 to 100 tons of ammonia per day. Professor Sekine believes that their findings will be important for future energy and material sources.

DOI: 10.1039/c7sc00840f

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