Ammonia, best known as the key ingredient in fertiliser, is being redesigned as a carbon-free energy store for renewable power. The problem is that the Haber-Bosch process, which produces ammonia today, relies on fossil fuels and runs in massive centralised plants. This makes it unsuitable for capturing renewable energy, which is generated intermittently and often in remote locations. RestartNH3 aims to build a completely new ammonia synthesis process that runs on renewable electricity, water, and air alone. The team will develop nano-materials that act as low-temperature catalysts and high-temperature absorbents, then integrate reaction and separation steps into a single, recycle-less system. A self-sustaining heat strategy will regenerate the absorbents without extra energy input. If successful, the project could enable renewable energy to be stored as ammonia at the point of generation, then transported long-term through existing infrastructure. This would create a global carbon-free energy trade system, analogous to today’s fossil fuel network, allowing countries to balance supply and demand across seasons and continents. The work directly addresses the UN Sustainable Development Goals for clean energy and climate action.
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When Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber received their Nobel prize for the discovery of the artificial nitrogen fixation process (the Haber-Bosch process), they acknowledged that there might be other ways of producing ammonia. Over a century later, we are still using the same fossil fuel-dependent process and a very similar catalyst. Now, the time has arrived to restart the role of ammonia beyond feeding over 50 % of the population as fertiliser. In a carbon-free society, ammonia (with a high energy density and a well-established transport infrastructure) is anticipated to be the lynchpin for the long-term storage of renewable energy to align its production with our energy demands. RestartNH3 will provide a ground-breaking recycle-less ammonia synthesis process, driven exclusively by renewable energy, water and air. Its fundamental pillars will be the development of energy functional nano-materials as low temperature ammonia catalysts and high temperature absorbents. Innovative technological advances will build on these revolutionary capabilities through the pioneering integration of the reaction and separation steps into a recycle-less process as well as a self-sustained, energy-efficient regeneration of absorbents via a unique heat integration strategy. RestartNH3 will deliver an agile (fast response), efficient (high energy storage), distributed (low capital versus the economy of scale of the conventional Haber Bosch process) ammonia synthesis process aligned to the intermittent and geographically isolated production of renewable energy. As a result, we will be able to store renewable energy in their production points, to be stored long-term and transported in the form of ammonia. Such a process has the potential to create a new global carbon-free energy trade system similar to the existing one around fossil fuels, essential to fulfil our carbon-free ambitions and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
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