Looking at the paper, in similar papers reference is made to this paper published 13th September 2023:<p>“Laser-induced nitrogen fixation”
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41441-0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41441-0</a><p>This is Open Access, and mentions how that is also a leap forward in Nitrogen fixation<p>“Abstract:
For decarbonization of ammonia production in industry, alternative methods by exploiting renewable energy sources have recently been explored. Nonetheless, they still lack yield and efficiency to be industrially relevant. Here, we demonstrate an advanced approach of nitrogen fixation to synthesize ammonia at ambient conditions via laser–induced multiphoton dissociation of lithium oxide. Lithium oxide is dissociated under non–equilibrium multiphoton absorption and high temperatures under focused infrared light, and the generated zero–valent metal spontaneously fixes nitrogen and forms a lithium nitride, which upon subsequent hydrolysis generates ammonia. The highest ammonia yield rate of 30.9 micromoles per second per square centimeter is achieved at 25 °C and 1.0 bar nitrogen. This is two orders of magnitude higher than state–of–the–art ammonia synthesis at ambient conditions. The focused infrared light here is produced by a commercial simple CO2 laser, serving as a demonstration of potentially solar pumped lasers for nitrogen fixation and other high excitation chemistry. We anticipate such laser-involved technology will bring unprecedented opportunities to realize not only local ammonia production but also other new chemistries.”
Big if true...<p>This could enable fertilizer production with no CO2 emissions. The numbers in the paper suggest that it might prove cheaper than natural gas based production which is common today. Fertilizer production is 2.1% of all CO2 emissions right now.
What does the term "current-to-ammonia efficiency" mean here? I imagine it would refer to the specificity of the reaction, i.e. that 99% of the electrons passing through the system are used in the main reaction, and <1% on side reactions.<p>The abstract doesn't go into detail on energy efficiency and a comparison to the old method using gas. For instance, would this method result in less CO2 emissions using regular grid electricity, or would it need to be 100% low-carbon electricity? If, say, the electricity came from a CCGT plant, how would that compare? Etc etc
This would be a <i>gigantic</i> breakthrough if true and scalable, correct? Most ammonia production for fertilizer currently uses natural gas, and of clean sources of electricity with such a high yield of ammonia production would have a huge worldwide impact. So is there something I'm missing?
One downside of ammonia is its toxicity (with an IDLH threshold of 300 ppm). I doubt we'll ever see cars running on it, and storing large amounts as energy storage sounds risky.<p>Do we know if this process is burstable (i.e. the devices for running it are likely cheap enough compared to the energy requirement that they don't need to run 24/7, and could use excess renewable energy when available)?
This could be a game changer for seasonal energy storage if it allows round trip efficiencies of even say 60%. Ammonia has been demonstrated as a fuel in existing natural gas turbines [1] at combustion efficiencies up to 99%.<p>1. <a href="https://nh3fuelassociation.org/2018/12/07/performance-of-ammonia-natural-gas-co-fired-gas-turbine-for-power-generation/#:~:text=Performance%20of%20the%20gas%20turbine,1000%20ppm%4016%25O2" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://nh3fuelassociation.org/2018/12/07/performance-of-amm...</a>.
The paper says that this is only <i>half</i> of a solution: "Our investigation here has focussed [sic] on the fundamental Li-NRR performance at the cathode. Further developments towards a complete ammonia electrosynthesis system will require investigations of appropriate anode reactions while eliminating sacrificial solvent oxidation. A feasible initial strategy is to couple the Li-NRR with the H2 oxidation reaction, which has already been demonstrated but requires improvements in stability and activity. A more-desirable anode process is H2O oxidation, which presents larger challenges because of the potential interference of water with the Li-mediated process and vice versa."<p>This system involves ethanol as a sacrificial hydrogen donor: "The amount of ammonia produced in the 96 h experiments (3.9 ± 0.1 mmol) was around four times higher than the amount of ethanol present (1 mmol), indicating that it is not a completely sacrificial reactant but can also operate as a proton carrier."
Toyota has an engine that runs on ammonia<p><a href="https://www.enginelabs.com/engine-tech/engine/corrosion-of-conformity-toyota-takes-aim-at-evs-with-ammonia-engine/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.enginelabs.com/engine-tech/engine/corrosion-of-c...</a>
I need to ask this question for any chemical engineers currently reading this. I'm seeing people in the comments talking about how this could be applied to consumer vehicles, not just industry like cargo ships and agriculture.<p>If I, the consumer, had unlimited access to cheap, unregulated liquid ammonia (as common as gasoline), how many precursor-steps am I away from having access to like... a LOT of high explosives?<p>-asking for your friendly neighborhood crazy person with a vendetta against... whoever.<p>As far as I can see, it's a very similar problem to hydrogen. It doesn't matter how safe you can make it, it matters how dangerous a random nutjob can make it.
Interesting paper from 2019 if you are thinking about burning ammonia for e.g. power plants etc. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1540748918306345" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S154074891...</a>
>150 ± 20 nmol s−1 cm−2<p>Isn't this miniscule? Is this commercially viable?<p>Edit: The molecular mass of nitrogen is 28, so 1 mol is 28 grams, so 150 nmol is 28 x150 nano grams = 4.2 micro grams. How much gas is this?
From <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Process" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Process</a>:<p>> ammonia production is energy-intensive, accounting for 1% to 2% of global energy consumption, 3% of global carbon emissions,[23] and 3% to 5% of natural gas consumption<p>Big if we can improve this.<p>For more on the Haber process and its impact on the world, I highly recommend this book: "The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler" by Thomas Hager.