A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Jodhpur have identified promising single-atom catalysts for Nitrogen Reduction Reaction (NRR) required for the synthesis of “Green Ammonia”, according to the institution's press release on September 26. 

Dr Amitava Banerjee along with his team have achieved this feat as the new discovery of an alternative process that would enormously reduce the carbon footprint as the conventional process of synthesising green ammonia emits ~3% of global carbon dioxide and consumes ~2% of the world’s total energy production,

Hence, the researchers at IIT Jodhpur are focusing on the design of electrocatalysts for green ammonia and green urea production. Both will have less or negligible carbon footprint compared to existing conventional processes.

Talking about the research, Dr Amitava Banerjee, Assistant Professor, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT Jodhpur, said, "The recent surge in interest in the electrochemical synthesis of NH3 has highlighted the inadequacy of Nitrogen Reduction Reaction (NRR) catalysts. So, our group’s primary objective is to computationally design the NRR catalysts and provide insight for the experimentally obtained NRR catalytic mechanism.”

The future research target of the group is to explore the electrochemical synthesis of ammonia from various nitrogenous pollutants. The lab at IIT Jodhpur working on the designing of electrocatalysts for synthesis of “Green Ammonia” and led by Dr Amitava Banerjee is currently being funded by the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology - Start-up Research Grant (SERB, DST - SRG).