Issue 7, 2015

Chemical looping of metal nitride catalysts: low-pressure ammonia synthesis for energy storage

Abstract

The activity of many heterogeneous catalysts is limited by strong correlations between activation energies and adsorption energies of reaction intermediates. Although the reaction is thermodynamically favourable at ambient temperature and pressure, the catalytic synthesis of ammonia (NH3), a fertilizer and chemical fuel, from N2 and H2 requires some of the most extreme conditions of the chemical industry. We demonstrate how ammonia can be produced at ambient pressure from air, water, and concentrated sunlight as renewable source of process heat via nitrogen reduction with a looped metal nitride, followed by separate hydrogenation of the lattice nitrogen into ammonia. Separating ammonia synthesis into two reaction steps introduces an additional degree of freedom when designing catalysts with desirable activation and adsorption energies. We discuss the hydrogenation of alkali and alkaline earth metal nitrides and the reduction of transition metal nitrides to outline a promoting role of lattice hydrogen in ammonia evolution. This is rationalized via electronic structure calculations with the activity of nitrogen vacancies controlling the redox-intercalation of hydrogen and the formation and hydrogenation of adsorbed nitrogen species. The predicted trends are confirmed experimentally with evolution of 56.3, 80.7, and 128 μmol NH3 per mol metal per min at 1 bar and above 550 °C via reduction of Mn6N2.58 to Mn4N and hydrogenation of Ca3N2 and Sr2N to Ca2NH and SrH2, respectively.

Graphical abstract: Chemical looping of metal nitride catalysts: low-pressure ammonia synthesis for energy storage

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
04 Mac 2015
Accepted
28 Apr 2015
First published
01 Mei 2015
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2015,6, 3965-3974

Chemical looping of metal nitride catalysts: low-pressure ammonia synthesis for energy storage

R. Michalsky, A. M. Avram, B. A. Peterson, P. H. Pfromm and A. A. Peterson, Chem. Sci., 2015, 6, 3965 DOI: 10.1039/C5SC00789E

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