No.153 Seminar ： Electrochemical ammonia synthesis based on sustainable energy ~ Bread made from water, air, and sun ~
- Takaya Ogawa (Graduate School of Energy Science)
- 2018/09/18 4:30pm
- The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research (Research Administration Building 1F)
- Japanese (slide is written in English) (This seminar is open for students and researchers at Kyoto Univ.)
Summary
Nitrogen is indispensable for food production and was once extracted from Chile saltpeter, which is a limited resource. One famous economist predicted that total population in the world would plateau less than 1 billion because people would struggle each other for food. 100 years ago, Haber-Bosch process was established as a process to produce ammonia from di-nitrogen in air. Based on the process, huge amount of ammonia has been synthesized as artificial fertilizer. However, this process must produce ammonia at very large scale for economic efficiency. Then, artificial fertilizer cannot be exported to countries that do not develop sufficient transport infrastructure, which results in food shortage in such countries. In this presentation, I will talk about “electrochemical synthesis” as a convenient and smack scale method to produce ammonia from air, water, and “sun”.
In addition, ammonia is getting attention as an energy carrier of sustainable energy. I will also talk that aspect.