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In case you missed it: N2-> NH3 in most efficient electrochemical reaction, ever
Most of the NH3 in the world is made by the Haber-Bosch process, which takes hydrogen gas made from fossil-fuel feedstocks combined with N2.
Alexandr Simonov, Douglas MacFarlane, and coworkers from Monash University improved on an electrochemical, lithium-mediated N2 reduction reaction to make NH3 at a rate 100 times as high as the rates of previous attempts (Nature 2022, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05108-y).
This new process could be a greener alternative to current NH3 production processes, which consume about 1% of the world’s total energy. In 2010, the Haber-Bosch process dumped about 451 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air, according to the Institute for Industrial Productivity.
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