(495e) Electric Fields Accelerated Nitrogen Chemistry
AIChE Annual Meeting
2021
2021 Annual Meeting
Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division
Nitrogen Chemistry II: N2 Reduction
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - 1:50pm to 2:10pm
To tackle the above challenges, we designed modular, sustainable ammonia synthesis driven by renewable electric fields.2 DFT calculations3 show that high electric fields can shift the net reaction thermodynamics equilibrium (Figure 1(a)). The high positive electric fields can also alter ammonia synthesis mechanism without passing the kinetically unfavorable N2 dissociation (Figure 1(b)). Under no electric fields, the most favorable thermodynamic reaction pathway of ammonia synthesis is via N2 dissociation. While under a high positive electric field, the most favorable thermodynamic reaction pathway is via hydrogenation of N2* to form N2H*(Figure 1(c)). In addition, the positive field further lowers the energetics of most favorable reaction path.
The fundamental science of enhanced reaction rates, improved selectivity, altered reaction mechanism of catalysis via high electric field can advance the fields of catalysis under reactors, in which a large external electric field exists, such as STM probe ''nanoreactors'', in probe-bed-probe reactors, and in capacitor reactors. The fundamental science here can also expand our scope of vision on the confinementâinternal field effects on zeolite catalysis.
References
- Honkala, K., et al., Science, 307, 555-558, 2005.
- Che, F., et al., ACS Catalysis, 8, 5153-5174, 2018.
- Che, F, in preparation, 2021.