Scientists produce ammonia out of thin air – using lightning

Just when you assume that science can no longer shock and surprise you, scientists come up with something that fits the bill – with the most recent breakthrough involving the production of ammonia out of thin air – using nature’s powerful force of lightning.

As it happens, University of Sydney researchers have used artificially created lightning to create a more efficient method of producing ammonia, one of the world’s most important chemicals and the main ingredient of fertilizers that account for nearly half of all global food production, per a Phys report on July 4.

How to make ammonia out of thin air

Specifically, according to a study published in Angewandte Chemie International, these scientists have successfully generated the low-cost, decentralized, and scalable “green ammonia,” which addresses the climate damage created by the current method, the Haber-Bosch process.

Their more straightforward pathway for ammonia production involves harnessing the power of plasma by electrifying or exciting the air and a membrane-based electrolyzer, a silver box where the conversion to gaseous ammonia occurs. 

As opposed to the Haber-Bosch process – where ammonia is the result of combining nitrogen and hydrogen gases in high temperatures and pressure in the presence of a catalyst – the plasma-based process uses electricity to excite nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air, and the team then passes these to the membrane-based electrolyzer to convert them to ammonia.

In the words of lead researcher Professor Patrick Cullen from the University of Sydney’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Net Zero Institute:

“In this research, we’ve successfully developed a method that allows air to be converted to ammonia in its gaseous form using electricity. A huge step towards our goals.”

Now, the next step is to make the method more energy efficient and competitive as an alternative to Haber-Bosch, with Professor Cullent stating that, in the two-step process combining plasma and electrolysis, the team has “already made the plasma component viable in terms of energy efficiency and scalability,” and now’s the turn to “push the energy efficiency of the electrolyzer component.”

Meanwhile, scientists at the University of Cardiff and Peking University have developed a way to produce hydrogen gas that doesn’t involve the release of CO2 and instead reacts hydrogen-rich bioethanol from agricultural waste with water at just 270°C using a new bimetallic catalyst.