Arctura Awarded $200K Grant from U.S. Dept. of Energy
Electrifying the Synthesis of Nitric Acid
The world appears to be rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels as a source of grid energy and towards renewable sources that don’t emit greenhouse gases. For those of us that recognize climate change for the tremendous threat that it is, this shift is undeniably a good thing, even if the change is coming just in time to avoid the worst climate consequences. The fact that utility wind and solar PV are the fastest growing sources of grid energy in the US is concrete evidence of the progress we are making. And when we include nuclear energy in the mix of non-fossil energy sources, we see that nearly 40% of our domestic grid energy now comes from carbon-free sources. That’s a 50% increase over 2012 levels.
But in addition to decarbonizing the grid, there are other important – but so far less attention-grabbing – climate mitigating changes that need to be made in the way we live our lives. And many of these are not even close to reaching the tipping point of change because new technologies have not yet reached maturity.
A prime example of this is the fixation of nitrogen from air using the Haber-Bosch (HB) process. What is the HB process, and why should we care about it? Well, to answer the first part of the question: nitrogen fixation is the process of extracting the N2 molecule from air and breaking it apart to form monatomic nitrogen. The HB process is the state-of-the-art industrial process that accomplishes that.
Nitrogen is plentiful – it of course constitutes about 78% of the air we breathe – but it’s not particularly useful in its molecular form. But when the molecule is split, the single atom element can be used to make ammonia and nitric acid. And those can be used to produce fertilizers, explosives, adipic acid (used to make nylon), toluene di-isocyanate (used to make polyurethane), and many, many other common and useful products.
Why do we care? Well, the HB process is probably one of the most important technologies ever developed, as it’s responsible for producing nitrogen fertilizers that have helped to increase farm yields to feed a rapidly growing population post industrial revolution. It’s been estimated that half of the nitrogen in our bodies today originated through the HB process. It’s not an overstatement to say that it is essential to our survival.
At the same time, the HB process accounts for 1-2% of worldwide energy use and is responsible for the emission of 300 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to the emissions of about 65 million internal combustion cars. So continuing business as usual is also a threat to our way of life.
At Arctura, we are working on an approach to electrifying the nitrogen fixation process and reducing (and maybe eliminating) its carbon footprint. Our technology uses low temperature plasma (LTP), which is a process in which air at room temperature and pressure is passed through a high strength electric field, causing some of the molecules in the air to become ionized or energized in certain vibrational modes that lead to splitting of the nitrogen molecule. If we use renewable sources to power the process, then we can generate useful products, like nitric acid, carbon-free using only water, air, and electricity. Moreover, theoretical considerations suggest that we can do it at significantly lower energy cost than HB. We think that’s a vision worth pursuing.
The Department of Energy’s SBIR program also supports our vision. In 2022, we received a Phase I SBIR grant to advance the LTP technology. Since then, we have been busy developing and testing prototypes. Along with our partners in industry and academia, we believe that the time is right to bring this exciting technology to market. You can read our Press Release here.
We will be chronicling our efforts here, so stay tuned!
