Ammonia is used in fertilizer and many industrial processes.
Ammonia is used in fertilizer and many industrial processes. It is also seen as a promising way to store and transport energy, as it is safer and easier to handle ammonia than hydrogen gas. Using plasma, the fourth state of matter, scientists have created a material that boosts ammonia production.
“If one needs industrial hydrogen someplace else than where it is made, it will be easier and safer to transport hydrogen as ammonia and store it until it is needed. Ideally, then, one would decompose the ammonia where the hydrogen is needed, on demand,” said Emily Carter, senior strategic advisor and associate laboratory director for the Applied Materials and Sustainability Sciences (AMSS) directorate at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). “So, one needs methods to synthesize and decompose ammonia from and to hydrogen efficiently and cheaply, and we are working on both at PPPL in the electromanufacturing science division of AMSS.”
The research was done by a multidisciplinary team from various institutions, including DOE’s PPPL and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Princeton University, Rutgers University and Rowan University. A scientific article about the work was recently published in ACS Energy Letters.
Read more at: Princeton University
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