Efficient Zero-Carbon Ammonia Production

The Department of Energy’s Industrial Decarbonation Roadmap aims to decarbonize energyintensive sectors reaching net zero carbon emissions nationwide by 2050. The chemical industry sector accounts for 20% of CO2 emissions where new innovations in chemical manufacturing can help mitigate CO2 emissions. One chemical whose manufacturing contributes a substantial emission of CO2 at 1.8% of global CO2 emissions is ammonia, commonly produced from feedstocks of coal, oil, and natural gas. Toward attaining a net-zero carbon process for producing ammonia, concepts have been proposed using renewable solar or wind energy to operate water electrolyzers feeding hydrogen to the Haber-Bosch reactors. However, with low 10-15% equilibrium conversions, this approach meets net-zero carbon targets but inefficiently produces ammonia requiring larger and costlier plants to meet ammonia demand. This Phase I project will develop and demonstrate a new reaction process to economically produce ammonia. Operating with renewable solar or wind energy, this ammonia production system will not emit carbon dioxide helping to attain net-zero carbon goals. With 3% of the world's energy consumption going toward ammonia synthesis, and with present systems resulting in extremely low yields, the production of ammonia is costly, energy intensive, and emits a substantive CO2 load to the atmosphere. Skyhaven’s new approach to producing ammonia uses renewable energy that efficiently produces ammonia while having no carbon dioxide emissions.