TY - JOUR
T1 - Opportunities for intermediate temperature renewable ammonia electrosynthesis
AU - Fernandez, Carlos A.
AU - Hortance, Nicholas M.
AU - Liu, Yu Hsuan
AU - Lim, Jeonghoon
AU - Hatzell, Kelsey B.
AU - Hatzell, Marta C.
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 184661 and No. 1933646.
Funding Information:
Marta Hatzell is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engi- neering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to starting at Georgia Tech in August of 2015, she was a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Campaign, and completed her PhD at Penn State University. Currently Prof. Hat- zell's research group focuses on exploring the role photochemistry and electrochemistry may play in future sustainable systems. She was awarded the NSF Early CAREER award in 2019 for her work on distributed solar-fertilizers, and the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Royal Society of Chemistry.
PY - 2020/8/21
Y1 - 2020/8/21
N2 - Production of ammonia using only renewable energy is achievable through various routes; however, direct electrochemical conversion technologies have achieved significant attention. Despite this attention, the promise for electrochemical ammonia synthesis is unclear, as most electrochemical technology performance is well below that of the Haber-Bosch process (state of the art). Thus, there is a growing interest in defining realistic performance targets which would make renewable ammonia derived from electrochemical systems a reality. However, most efforts thus far have only explored optimizing single technology specific performance metrics such as faradaic efficiency. Optimization of this single performance metric often occurs at the expense of the rate of production which drives implementation and thus can be misleading. Here, we aim to outline the performance targets achievable for renewable ammonia produced through intermediate temperature electrosynthesis. Through exploring the thermodynamic and kinetic challenges, we highlight the optimum expected rate of production and energy efficiency for intermediate temperature electrosynthesis. We also review current experimental reports focused on intermediate temperature ammonia electrosynthesis and detail materials related opportunities in catalyst and solid-electrolyte design. Finally, we discuss some of the challenges related to reporting these desired metrics due to measurement error, and offer solutions to mitigate these challenges.
AB - Production of ammonia using only renewable energy is achievable through various routes; however, direct electrochemical conversion technologies have achieved significant attention. Despite this attention, the promise for electrochemical ammonia synthesis is unclear, as most electrochemical technology performance is well below that of the Haber-Bosch process (state of the art). Thus, there is a growing interest in defining realistic performance targets which would make renewable ammonia derived from electrochemical systems a reality. However, most efforts thus far have only explored optimizing single technology specific performance metrics such as faradaic efficiency. Optimization of this single performance metric often occurs at the expense of the rate of production which drives implementation and thus can be misleading. Here, we aim to outline the performance targets achievable for renewable ammonia produced through intermediate temperature electrosynthesis. Through exploring the thermodynamic and kinetic challenges, we highlight the optimum expected rate of production and energy efficiency for intermediate temperature electrosynthesis. We also review current experimental reports focused on intermediate temperature ammonia electrosynthesis and detail materials related opportunities in catalyst and solid-electrolyte design. Finally, we discuss some of the challenges related to reporting these desired metrics due to measurement error, and offer solutions to mitigate these challenges.
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U2 - 10.1039/d0ta03753b
DO - 10.1039/d0ta03753b
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85089747273
SN - 2050-7488
VL - 8
SP - 15591
EP - 15606
JO - Journal of Materials Chemistry A
JF - Journal of Materials Chemistry A
IS - 31
ER -