A cleaner route to ammonia

24 May 2023

A method driven by renewable energy could end the need for fossil fuels in fertilizer
production.

Douglas Macfarlane, chief scientific officer at Jupiter Ionics, hopes to produce green fertilizer

Jupiter Ionics in Melbourne, Australia, spun off from Monash University, Melbourne, in
2021.

It is a curious quirk of chemistry that when lithium atoms work together, they can break one of
the strongest known chemical bonds. Lithium can take the triple-bonded nitrogen molecule
(N2) and, under ambient conditions, break it in two.

Jupiter Ionics in Melbourne, Australia — a finalist in The Spinoff Prize 2023 — aims to harness
this chemistry to make ammonia (NH3).

Ammonia is crucial to produce synthetic fertilizer, which the world relies on to grow crops.
Since the early 1900s, ammonia has been made by the industrial Haber–Bosch process. Global
ammonia production now reaches 150 million tonnes per year.

“Haber–Bosch is a very central piece of chemistry in the world today, but it is reliant on fossil
fuels,” says Douglas Macfarlane, an electrochemistry researcher at Monash University in
Melbourne, and Jupiter Ionics’ founder and chief scientific officer. The process operates at
high pressure and temperature, and in large, centralized, continually operating plants that are
difficult to marry with the comparatively small-scale, intermittent nature of renewable
energy, Macfarlane explains. Haber–Bosch is responsible for an estimated 1.5% of global carbon
emissions, and its contribution continues to grow.

Macfarlane’s Monash laboratory has pioneered a high-selectivity, lithium-mediated

electrochemical pathway to ammonia. The process uses air, water and renewable electricity.

In 2021, Macfarlane founded Jupiter Ionics to scale up and commercialize the process.
Producing green fertilizer is the initial goal, but generating ammonia as a carbon-free fuel is
also a prospect. Jupiter’s technology is closing in on the US Department of Energy’s target of
achieving carbon-free production of ammonia at a rate that is commercially competitive with
Haber–Bosch.

Electric dreams
The idea of pulling apart nitrogen molecules to make ammonia using an electrical current,
rather than high temperatures and pressures, goes back a century 1. The electrodes in an
electrochemical cell can split N2 in a catalyst-mediated process, then combine the atoms with
protons (H+) sourced from water to form ammonia.
That is the theory at least, says the chief executive of Jupiter Ionics, Charles Day. “People
have made tiny amounts of ammonia, but to be commercially relevant you need to be able to
produce it at a significant rate,” says Day, a chemical engineer turned technology
commercialization executive. Day was initially engaged by Monash to write the company’s
business plan, before becoming the inaugural chief executive.

The challenge lies in suppressing a side reaction in which the cell takes the simpler path of
combining pairs of protons to produce hydrogen gas (H 2), instead of ammonia. Hydrogen is
usually the predominant product in the electrochemical process. The problem, known as the
selectivity challenge, is described by a metric called faradaic efficiency (FE): the amount of
ammonia produced relative to the ammonia that could be generated based on electrical input.

Until a few years ago, ammonia selectivity of only 5–20% FE had been reported.

In 2019, after assessing several candidate electrocatalyst systems and making little to no
ammonia, Macfarlane’s Monash team tried lithium. “It had become quite well known in the
lithium battery world that lithium will react with nitrogen,” Macfarlane recalls. “That’s the
tantalizing step, that you can bust open the nitrogen molecule with lithium.”

The key chemistry of the lithium-mediated process happens at the cathode of the
electrochemical cell. Here, lithium and nitrogen react to form lithium nitride (Li 3N). This
intermediate reacts with protons (generated at the anode) to release ammonia and regenerate
the lithium (see ‘The electrochemical ammonia cell’).

In 2021, Macfarlane and his colleagues reported2 that by adding a phosphorus-based proton
shuttle to mediate proton delivery to the cathode, they had reached 69% FE. A year later, they
reported3 that by switching to an electrolyte that better supported the lithium-mediated
nitrogen-splitting step, they had hit almost 100% FE. “To be commercially relevant, the
selectivity needs to be basically at 100%, which is what our most recent paper finally
reported,” Macfarlane says.

These levels of ammonia production are a significant step forward and place the team at the
forefront of the field, says Karthish Manthiram, an electrochemist working on ammonia
production at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who is not affiliated with the
company. “I thought it would take the community a few more years to achieve the results they
have reported,” Manthiram says. Jupiter Ionics’s results, he adds, suggest that this is a good
time to commercialize the research and pursue it in a “more-nimble, results-oriented”
environment.

Scaling up the technology, while demonstrating stability and longevity, will be key challenges,
according to Manthiram. “It is a high-risk endeavour,” he says. “It’s a matter of when, not if,
electrochemical ammonia production will work — but the timing is always the hard part to
predict.”

Pathways to market
Jupiter Ionics launched in April 2021, raising AUD $ 2.5 million (US $1.7 million) in seed
funding. In March 2022, the company won a further Aus$2.65 million from the Australian
government to lead a consortium of companies to develop its green ammonia-manufacturing
technology. Using this collective funding, the company has grown to a team of about a dozen
people, says Day.

Readying the process for the real world means shifting from a small-batch operation to a
scalable reactor that produces ammonia in a continuous stream. “Separately, the anode side
and the cathode side of the flow process are now working well,” says Irina Simonova, an
electrochemistry researcher at the company. “We are now focusing on getting the two sides
working well together,” she says. Both electrodes must carry the same current — they are two
parts of the same electrical circuit — but at the moment each electrode has its own optimum
current per unit area (the current density). The team is working to tune each electrode’s area
and thickness to achieve the current-density sweet spot.

The company plans to return to the market later this year to raise ‘series A’ investment, Day
says. “As we scale up, the reactors get bigger and more expensive. The next round of
investment is to start scaling up to something more like a product we could sell.”

Jupiter Ionics has strong technology that targets a real need, and it also has a solid team and
business plan, says Bob Gatte, a judge for The Spinoff Prize 2023 and chief executive of HighT-
Tech in College Park, Maryland, which won the prize in 2021. “If their first pathway to
commercialization doesn’t work, they have other options.”

The team has identified several potential routes to revenue generation. “We have the option
to make entire systems ourselves or to license our technology to other companies,” Day says.
“We’re still evaluating which of those makes the most sense for us.”

Also on the horizon is an emerging market for green ammonia in the energy sector.
Increasingly, ammonia generated from renewable sources is recognized as a potential energy
carrier — a way to convert renewable energy into a chemical form that can be readily stored,
transported or even shipped.

“We’re initially focusing on fertilizer because it is addressing today’s problem, today,” says
Day. “There is a near-200-million tonne per annum ammonia market which needs to
decarbonize as fast as possible. But we certainly want to play a part in developing ammonia as
an energy carrier,” he says.
“Energy offers potential upsides on top of their main focus,” Gatte says. “Now, they have to
prove the technology is scalable.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01659-w

This article is part of Nature Outlook: The Spinoff Prize 2023, an editorially independent
supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

References
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Jupiter Ionics shortlisted in Government of Victoria start-up awards for green ammonia
research
May 26, 2023

Jupiter Ionics has been shortlisted in the Governor of Victoria Start-up Awards, celebrating the
State’s trailblazers in its $91bn start-up sector.

The Melbourne-based start-up was ranked in the Top 30 for the Best Newcomer category for its
breakthrough work on green ammonia technology.

Ammonia is widely used as fertiliser and is essential in the global food system, but current
technology typically generates around two tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) for every tonne of
ammonia produced.

Jupiter Ionics’ technology, exclusively licensed from Monash University, uses renewable
electricity, air, and water to make ammonia with potentially zero carbon emissions.

Dr Charlie Day, Jupiter Ionics CEO, said, “We’re passionate about Australia’s potential to be a
clean energy superpower and our company is playing its role in that narrative by ensuring
Victoria is nurturing the technologies that are making it happen.”

Green Ammonia is expected to have a range of uses in a low-carbon future, including as a

significant clean energy source for replacing fossil fuels. Ammonia-powered trains and ships
are already in development.
Producing ammonia using an electrical current derived from renewable sources would yield
‘large reductions in carbon emissions’, according to a profile article on Jupiter Ionics in
Nature.

In a lithium-mediated system, a phosphorous-based proton shuttle ferries protons formed at

the anode to the cathode, in electrolytes rich in hydrogen and nitrogen, and reactions in
nitrogen, lithium ions and protons produce ammonia.

But scaling up the technology, while demonstrating stability and longevity, will be key
challenges, the article states.