Knowledge Bank

Ammonia is a key molecule used in many forms of industry. Current production uses the Haber-Bosch process which involves carbon dioxide emissions and a large amount of energy to apply extreme pressures. The proposed method will use solid oxide fuel cell-like reactors with a metal nitride catalyst to produce ammonia from water and nitrogen with the byproduct of oxygen. Investigation of molybdenum nitride and vanadium nitride was conducted in order to determine successful synthesis methods and decomposition temperatures. X-ray diffractometry (XRD) was utilized to determine the structure of the samples and temperature-programmed decomposition (TPD) was utilized to determine the decomposition temperature. Vanadium nitride was successfully produced in a pure form and had a decomposition temperature of 900 °C. Molybdenum Nitride was unable to be synthesized in pure form, but gave TPD results that suggested it may be stable if produced purely enough. Further metal nitrides will be studied and implemented into SOFC-like reactors to determine the effectiveness in producing ammonia in this application.