Revolutionizing ammonia production: Turning polluted water into clean, valuable chemical

As our world’s population grows, so does demand for ammonia – a key ingredient in fertilizer. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that ammonia production must quadruple by 2050 to feed the increase in global population.

The current “gold standard” process for producing ammonia is energy-intensive and a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. Invented in the early 1900s, the Haber-Bosch method requires mixing hydrogen and nitrogen gas at 400-500 degrees Celsius. It’s responsible for nearly 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions and accounts for 2% of fossil energy use.

Researchers from McMaster University have developed a process that is green and faster, generates ammonia more efficiently from nitrate – a common water pollutant – and is “cleaner” because it uses renewable electricity rather than fossil fuel.

The team used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to study the performance of four versions of an iron-based catalyst, each with a different add-on or “ingredient.” The winning recipe enabled the nitrate to reach the catalyst (a material that accelerates a chemical reaction) more easily and be changed into ammonia more efficiently. This study was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

McMaster researcher Dr. Navid Noor, who conducted the work for his PhD under supervisor Dr. Drew Higgins, says the team was originally focused on finetuning the electronic aspects of the conversion process.

“When we dove deeper into this, we found out that the surface properties of the catalysts are playing a role. We had to find a material that delivers more electrons to our catalyst that also delivers more water to it.”

Noor says the technique they used at the CLS – X-ray absorption spectroscopy – helped them understand how the catalysts behave. He credited CLS staff for their support with the research. “They helped us design and setup our experiment and interpret the data, which helped us to make a very meaningful contribution to the field.”

Noor says the next step is to test their findings under real world, industry-relevant conditions. “That would give us the benchmark to start sustainable ammonia production using electrochemical technologies.”

 

Noor, Navid, Clara Argentino, Ashkan Irannezhad, Amy Wuttke, Mahtab Masouminia, Anja Schouten, Katrina Pegrum et al. "Decoupling the Impact of Electronic Structure and Electrode Wettability of Functionalized Iron Phthalocyanine Catalysts for Electrochemical Nitrate Reduction to Ammonia." Journal of the American Chemical Society (2026). https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c22794

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