IIT Jodhpur researchers design electrocatalysts for alternative fuel Green Ammonia

Ammonia is one of the key elements in the fertilizer industry as well as in paper, textile, and rubber industries.

Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur researcher Dr. Amitava Banerjee along with his team has identified promising single-atom catalysts for Nitrogen Reduction Reaction (NRR) required for the synthesis of “Green Ammonia”.  At present, the conventional process of synthesizing green ammonia has an enormous carbon footprint, as it emits 3 per cent of global carbon dioxide and consumes 2 per cent of the world’s total energy production. Electrochemical synthesis route could be a vital choice for its synthesis, where Nitrogen Reduction Reaction (NRR) is one of the hardest reactions to carry out due to the strong N-N triple bond coupled with poor nitrogen adsorption on many catalysts and presence of competitive hydrogen evolution reaction. So, the researchers focused on electrochemical NRR in order to synthesize “Green Ammonia”.

Currently, the team is focusing on the design of electrocatalysts for green ammonia and green urea production. Both will have less, or negligible carbon footprint compared to existing conventional processes. Urea is a vital compound for societal development and the high presence of 46 per cent nitrogen (by weight) makes it a major player of the fertilizer industry. Ammonia is also one of the key elements in the fertilizer industry as well as in paper, textile, rubber industries. Moreover, it could be a potential carrier for hydrogen for easy transportation and storage of the fuel, which may speed up the hydrogen economy in our country by utilizing the existing ammonia pipelines.

Talking about the significance of the research, Dr. Amitava Banerjee, Assistant Professor, Department of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering, IIT Jodhpur, said, “The recent surge in interest in the electrochemical synthesis of NH₃ has highlighted the inadequacy of Nitrogen Reduction Reaction (NRR) catalysts. So, our group’s primary objective is to computationally design the NRR catalysts and providing insight for the experimentally obtained NRR catalytic mechanism.”

He further added, “Our research methodology includes in-depth understanding of density functional theory-based tools in combination of high-throughput structural search and materials informatics. So that we can cover efficiently a vast composition space as well as corresponding materials structures. No doubt this atomistic design insight will reduce the experimental time as well as resource-expenditures for searching suitable NRR catalysts.”

Ammonia is one of the key elements