Chemical looping based ammonia production-A promising pathway for production of the noncarbon fuel

Qinghua Lai; Tianyi Cai; Shik Chi Edman Tsang; Xia Chen; Runping Ye; Zhenghe Xu; Morris D Argyle; Dong Ding; Yongmei Chen; Jianji Wang; Armistead G Russell; Ye Wu; Jian Liu; Maohong Fan

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2022.09.013

Chemical looping based ammonia production-A promising pathway for production of the noncarbon fuel

Sci Bull (Beijing). 2022 Oct 31;67(20):2124-2138. doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2022.09.013. Epub 2022 Sep 13.

Authors

Qinghua Lai¹, Tianyi Cai², Shik Chi Edman Tsang³, Xia Chen⁴, Runping Ye⁵, Zhenghe Xu⁶, Morris D Argyle⁷, Dong Ding⁸, Yongmei Chen⁹, Jianji Wang¹⁰, Armistead G Russell¹¹, Ye Wu¹², Jian Liu¹³, Maohong Fan¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Wyoming, Laramie WY 82071, USA.
² School of Energy and Power Engineering, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow and Heat Transfer in Power Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China.
³ Wolfson Catalysis, Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QR, UK.
⁴ College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Wyoming, Laramie WY 82071, USA; College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China; Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton Alberta T6G 1H9, Canada.
⁷ Department of Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo UT 84602, USA.
⁸ Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls ID 83415, USA.
⁹ College of Chemistry, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
¹⁰ School of Chemistry and Environmental Science, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang 453007, China.
¹¹ School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA 30332, USA.
¹² MIIT Key Laboratory of Thermal Control of Electronic Equipment, School of Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing 210094, China.
¹³ State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China; DICP-Surrey Joint Centre for Future Materials, Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, and Advanced Technology Institute, University of Surrey, Guilford Surrey GU2 7XH, UK. Electronic address: jianliu@dicp.ac.cn.
¹⁴ College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Wyoming, Laramie WY 82071, USA; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA 30332, USA. Electronic address: mfan@uwyo.edu.

PMID: 36546112
DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2022.09.013

Abstract

Ammonia, primarily made with Haber-Bosch process developed in 1909 and winning two Nobel prizes, is a promising noncarbon fuel for preventing global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. However, the undesired characteristics of the process, including high carbon footprint, necessitate alternative ammonia synthesis methods, and among them is chemical looping ammonia production (CLAP) that uses nitrogen carrier materials and operates at atmospheric pressure with high product selectivity and energy efficiency. To date, neither a systematic review nor a perspective in nitrogen carriers and CLAP has been reported in the critical area. Thus, this work not only assesses the previous results of CLAP but also provides perspectives towards the future of CLAP. It classifies, characterizes, and holistically analyzes the fundamentally different CLAP pathways and discusses the ways of further improving the CLAP performance with the assistance of plasma technology and artificial intelligence (AI).

Keywords: Ammonia synthesis; Chemical looping; Energy carrier; Nitrogen carrier; Renewable fuels.

Publication types

Systematic Review
Review

MeSH terms

Ammonia*
Artificial Intelligence*
Nitrogen / chemistry

Substances

Ammonia
Nitrogen