Ammonia is an important raw material for a broad range of products, including fertilizers, plastics, fibers, and pharmaceuticals. Now, scientists from Waseda Univ. in Tokyo and Nippon Shokubai Co. have transformed the high-temperature and high-pressure industrial process for making ammonia into an efficient, low-temperature one.
Ammonia is produced industrially via the Haber-Bosch process, in which nitrogen and hydrogen react in the presence of a metal catalyst at high temperatures (300–400°C) and pressures (about 200 atm) to form ammonia. The process is energy-intensive, consuming more than 1% of the world’s energy supply. An ammonia synthesis route that requires mild operating conditions would reduce this energy consumption and could enable the production of ammonia at small-scale, distributed plants.
Investigations into high-efficiency ammonia synthesis are ongoing around the world, and some progress toward a low-temperature and low-pressure process has been made. For...
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