A new collaborative research project led by Princeton's department of mechanical and aerospace engineering will provide potential solutions for decarbonizing chemical plants, helping to establish American leadership in “green manufacturing.”

The project, led by Yiguang Ju, the Robert Porter Patterson Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University, is supported by a $3.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Growing Convergence Research program and will seek to produce green ammonia with renewable electricity directly from nitrogen and water. Ammonia, which is typically used for fertilizer production, is a green-energy carrier. Compared to hydrogen, green ammonia is easier and safer to transport and can be used either immediately or stored safely in the long term.

“Traditional large-scale ammonia synthesis uses the Haber-Bosch process, which relies on the fossil fuel production of hydrogen; it’s both energy and carbon intensive,” said Ju, who is the head of electromanufacturing science and an associated faculty member at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). “This project aims to address the challenges in the intermittency, regional dependence and energy storage of renewable electricity.”