CATALYSIS
New paradigm for ammonia pursued Japanese partnership to commercialize lowpressure approach to making basic chemical
CREDIT: TOKYO INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (HOSONO); WEST VIRGINIA STATE UNIVERSITY (STUDENTS)
The Japanese amino acid maker Ajinomoto is teaming up with Tokyo Institute of Technology professor Hideo Hosono and other partners to commercialize what they say will be the world’s first small-scale, on-site ammonia synthesis system. Today, essentially all ammonia in commerce is made by the Haber-Bosch process, a century-old catalytic technology that couples hydrogen with nitrogen at high temperature and pressure. The drawback of the Haber-Bosch process is that it is cost-effective only in large, expensive, generally centralized plants. Hosono’s research group has come up with a new catalyst that, according to the partners, enables efficient ammonia synthesis in small facilities under low-temperature and low-pressure conditions. The partners aren’t disclosing the specific catalyst. However, a recent research paper from Hosono and colleagues describes catalyzing ammonia production with ruthenium nanoparticles deposited on a calcium aluminate electride.
Hosono at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
The Japanese partners have formed a new company, Tsubame BHB, to commercialize the technology. Ajinomoto says it aims to install an ammonia facility by 2021 at one of its amino acid plants, which use fermentation to convert ammonia into products such as glutamic acid.
Researchers have long pursued low-cost, environmentally friendly ammonia production. Recently, two teams of academic chemists presented bioelectrochemical routes to ammonia at the ACS annual meeting in San Francisco. Electrochemical and other processes for ammonia production won funding last December from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy arm. The Haber-Bosch process is quite efficient and to date has been hard to compete against, notes Trevor Brown, a consultant who runs the website Ammonia Industry. “Proven technologies can be funded; unproven technologies have a far harder time attracting funding,” he says. Nonetheless, several small-scale ammonia projects are advancing, Brown says, and may even open ahead of the Japanese effort. He points to a Siemens project near Oxford, England, and a demonstration plant planned by the Swedish firm Vattenfall. Both anticipate producing ammonia with hydrogen generated electrochemically from solar or wind power. The ammonia will then be burned as fuel at times when renewable energy comes up short.—MICHAEL MCCOY
POLLUTION
Dow, Bayer sued for polluting university campus West Virginia State University says the two chemical firms poisoned groundwater with likely carcinogens In a lawsuit, West Virginia State University accuses Dow Chemical and Bayer of polluting the groundwater under its campus with three likely carcinogens: 1,4-dioxane, 1,2-dichloroethane, and chloroform. Although the suit, filed on April 27 in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County, places no dollar value on a remedy, it seeks cleanup as well as compensatory and punitive damages, including a “national public relations program” to restore the school’s reputation. Dow operates the nearby Institute Industrial Park, where Bayer is a tenant. Dow “must be held accountable for the damage it has done to our property and reputation,” university President Anthony L. Jenkins says. The industrial park was the site of a methyl isocyanate plant once owned by
Bayer and Union Carbide, now a subsidiary of Dow. Although the plant closed several years ago, for years, residents of Institute, W.Va., worried about a leak, mindful of the 1984 accident at a similar Union Carbide facility in India that killed thousands. In announcing the lawsuit, the university acknowledges that it does not use the groundwater on campus. It says the contamination “does not pose a current health risk to anyone on campus,” adding that “outside experts have concluded that the available evidence does not indicate a threat to human health from [the] contaminants.” Dow, pointing to the university’s acknowledgment of a lack of health concern, says, “Every reason exists allowing the university to use the property as they originally intended.” It adds that it has met, and will continue to meet, its remediation commit-
West Virginia State University students attend class outside on campus. ments “with oversight from EPA and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.” Bayer tells C&EN that it “will be looking into this matter carefully.” The firm adds that it “takes its environmental obligations seriously.”—MARC REISCH MAY 8, 2017 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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