CHE.05 – Green Ammonia

• Jordan Eckhart
• Noah Guale
• Patricia Raymundo
• Maddie Robertss
• Van Vu

We chose Green Ammonia because it is an innovative and upcoming project. We, as a group, were very interested in a project related to helping the environment and we thought this topic was the most interesting. Green Ammonia, itself, is defined as hydrogen produced from water electrolysis by an alternative, renewable energy. It is an up-and-coming resource that can be used primarily to generate carbon-free fertilizer. It is known as a “world-saver” in the science community. This is because about a century ago, the world faced a major food crisis. Around 1898, a rapidly growing population was forcing farmers to grow crops, specifically their wheat, faster than nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil could keep up with and the South American deposits of guano and natural nitrates they used for fertilizer were dwindling. William Crooks, president for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, called for chemistry researchers to find solutions to aid in the manufacture of nitrogen fertilizers to help solve this crisis. So in 1909, in what is considered one of the biggest global problems solved by chemistry to date, Fritz Haber created a process to react hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen under pressure to make ammonia that the farmers used instead of natural fertilizers. Then, later in the year in July, Carl Bosch developed a commercial scale production of the ammonia at BASF, which was Germany’s largest chemical company . Together, the Haber-Bosch was combined for maximum efficiency and is still used today for most of the world’s ammonia production along with derivatives like urea and ammonium nitrate . Today, Green Ammonia has been said to be a clean fuel source that could power important processes like generating electricity and powering ships.