A major waste stream could become a resource in a new process that turns nitrates into ammonia with the power of the sun.
The production of ammonia is currently an energy-hungry process. Each year, 200 mega-metric tons (M-m.t.) of ammonia is produced globally, consuming 2.6 exajoules (EJ) of energy and emitting some 420 million m.t. of carbon dioxide. This is largely due to the Haber-Bosch process used to make ammonia from nitrogen gas, which requires very high temperatures and pressures to operate.
There have been efforts to decarbonize the production of ammonia by using electrochemical synthesis to convert nitrogen gas to ammonia, claims Meenesh Singh, a professor of chemical engineering at the Univ. of Illinois at Chicago. “The problem with this approach at ambient condition is the production rate of ammonia is very low,” he says, “and that is because the N2 molecule has a triple bond.”...
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