Beyond fossil fuel–driven nitrogen transformations

Abstract

Transforming nitrogen without carbon How much carbon does it take to make nitric acid? The counterintuitive answer nowadays is quite a lot. Nitric acid is manufactured by ammonia oxidation, and all the hydrogen to make ammonia via the Haber-Bosch process comes from methane. That's without even accounting for the fossil fuels burned to power the process. Chen et al. review research prospects for more sustainable routes to nitrogen commodity chemicals, considering developments in enzymatic, homogeneous, and heterogeneous catalysis, as well as electrochemical, photochemical, and plasma-based approaches. Science , this issue p. eaar6611

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Affiliated Institutions

• Texas A&M University US
• Northwestern University US
• Arizona State University US
• Brookhaven National Laboratory US
• Pennsylvania State University US
• Yale University US
• Utah State University US
• Columbia University US
• University of Rochester US
• IIT@MIT US
• Cornell University US
• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory US
• Washington State University US
• The University of Texas at Austin US
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory US
• University of Notre Dame US

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