Researchers cooked up a brand new recipe—with none power enter or CO2 emission—for producing ammonia, a key chemical for the agriculture trade, by mixing nitrogen-laced water with iron-rich rocks. Credit score: Yifan Gao and Iwnetim Abate
As an alternative of counting on energy-hungry reactors to generate excessive temperatures and stress, researchers are wanting underground at Earth’s pure warmth and forces to cook dinner up ammonia for fertilizer.
In a proof-of-concept research, printed January 21 within the journal Joule, researchers generated ammonia by mixing nitrogen-laced water with iron-rich rocks—with none power enter or CO2 emission. This new recipe might result in a extra sustainable different to present strategies, theoretically churning out sufficient ammonia for two.42 million years.
The thought stems from an uncommon geological phenomenon noticed within the Nineteen Eighties in Mali, West Africa. Locals found a properly streaming with hydrogen fuel, which scientists later traced to a water-rock chemical response beneath the Earth’s floor.
“It was an ‘aha’ moment,” says senior creator Iwnetim Abate of the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT). “We may be able to use Earth as a factory, harnessing its heat and pressure to produce valuable chemicals like ammonia in a cleaner manner.”
Ammonia is a key ingredient in fertilizers and will at some point energy the long run as clear gasoline, however at the moment’s industrial ammonia manufacturing is power intensive. It consumes about 2% of worldwide power and releases round 2.4 tons (5,291 lb) of CO2 for each ton (2,204 lb) of ammonia produced, making it the chemical trade’s prime CO2 emitter.
To check their “Earth factory” concept, Abate and his group constructed a rock-water response system that mimics Earth’s subsurface atmosphere. They uncovered artificial iron-rich minerals to nitrogen-laced water, triggering a chemical response that oxidized the rock and yielded ammonia, which the group dubbed “geological ammonia.” The method required no power enter, emitted no CO2, and even labored beneath ambient circumstances.
The group then swapped the artificial mineral with olivine, a pure iron-laden rock, to higher mimic real-world situations. They additional optimized the method by including a copper catalyst and cranking the warmth to 300°C (572°F). Inside 21 hours, they produced about 1.8 kg (4 lb) of ammonia per ton (2,204.6 lb) of olivine, demonstrating the tactic’s feasibility and sustainability.
“These rocks are all over the world, so the method could be adapted very widely across the globe,” says Abate. However nonetheless, “there’s a whole other level of complexity that we’ll need to work through.”
Implementation will contain drilling into iron-rich rocks deep inside Earth, injecting nitrogen-laced water, and grappling with the intricacies of how rocks crack, develop, and work together with gases and liquids. Abate is pursuing the scale-up efforts, together with a pilot scale take a look at by 2026, via Addis Power, an organization he co-founded.
The thought’s financial outlook is encouraging. Producing geological ammonia prices about $0.55 per kilogram (2.2 lb), on par with standard strategies priced at $0.40–$0.80. The analysis may open new methods to deal with wastewater air pollution.
“Nitrogen sources are considered as pollution in wastewater, and removing them costs money and energy,” says first creator Yifan Gao of MIT. “But we may be able to use the wastewater to produce ammonia. It’s a win-win strategy.” Integrating wastewater therapy with ammonia manufacturing may yield an extra revenue of $3.82 per kilogram of ammonia.
“Ammonia is pretty important for life,” says senior creator Ju Li of MIT. Aside from microbes, the one different pure option to produce ammonia on Earth is thru lightning putting nitrogen fuel. “That’s why the geological production of ammonia is quite interesting when you think about where life came from.”
Extra data:
Geological Ammonia: Stimulated NH3 manufacturing from rocks, Joule (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2024.12.006. www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(24)00541-5
Journal data:
Joule
Quotation:
Underground ammonia manufacturing: Earth’s pure forces provide sustainable answer (2025, January 21)
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