{"id":77584,"date":"2018-04-07T23:27:49","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T06:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/researchers-developing-renewable-energy-approach-for-producing-ammonia"},"modified":"2018-04-07T23:27:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T06:27:49","slug":"researchers-developing-renewable-energy-approach-for-producing-ammonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/researchers-developing-renewable-energy-approach-for-producing-ammonia","title":{"rendered":"Researchers developing renewable energy approach for producing ammonia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-developing-renewable-energy-approach-for-producing-ammonia.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Notre Dame are developing a renewable energy approach for synthesizing ammonia, an essential component of fertilizers that support the world\u2019s food production needs. The Haber-Bosch process developed in the early 1900s for producing ammonia relies on non-renewable fossil fuels and has limited applications for only large, centralized chemical plants.<\/p>\n<p>The new process, published in <i>Nature Catalysis<\/i>, utilizes a plasma\u2014an ionized gas\u2014in combination with non-noble metal catalysts to generate <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/ammonia\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">ammonia<\/a> at much milder conditions than is possible with Haber-Bosch. The energy in the plasma excites nitrogen molecules, one of the two components that go into making ammonia, allowing them to react more readily on the catalysts. Because the energy for the reaction comes from the plasma rather than high heat and intense pressure, the process can be carried out at small scale. This makes the new process well-suited for use with intermittent renewable <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/energy\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">energy<\/a> sources and for distributed <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/ammonia+production\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">ammonia production<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlasmas have been considered by many as a way to make ammonia that is not dependent on fossil fuels and had the potential to be applied in a less centralized way,\u201d said William Schneider, H. Clifford and Evelyn A. Brosey Professor of Engineering, affiliated member of ND Energy and co-author of the study. \u201cThe real challenge has been to find the right combination of plasma and <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/catalyst\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">catalyst<\/a>. By combining molecular models with results in the laboratory, we were able to focus in on combinations that had never been considered before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018-04-renewable-energy-approach-ammonia.html\">https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018&#45;04-renewable-energy-approach-ammonia.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of Notre Dame are developing a renewable energy approach for synthesizing ammonia, an essential component of fertilizers that support the world\u2019s food production needs. The Haber-Bosch process developed in the early 1900s for producing ammonia relies on non-renewable fossil fuels and has limited applications for only large, centralized chemical plants. The [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":467,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,1506,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-food","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}