Electrochemical Dinitrogen Activation: To Find a Sustainable Way to Produce Ammonia

A major challenge facing chemistry, in order to move to a sustainable, low-carbon future, is to avoid the use of fossil fuels to supply energy to drive chemical processes, which accounts for the largest part of carbon oxides emissions. A major effort is underway to develop novel synthetic paths using directly renewable energy (RE) sources to drive industrial processes [1]. With ammonia being the second largest-scale chemical (> 150 Mtons y− 1) with the top largest chemical process in terms of energy consumption (about 2.5 EJ on a world scale), it does not surprise the fast emerging interest to develop new solutions to synthesize NH3 from N2 using RE for the process [2]. Between the various solutions under development, the electrocatalytic conversion of N2 is one of the most attracting and one of the challenging directions is the possibility of N2 and H2O co-electrolysis in very mild conditions, around room temperature and atmospheric pressure [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. This solution also offers attractive possibilities for a distributed production of fertilizers [2].