Fully-funded PhD: Tailored plasma-catalysts water process for nitrogen fixation into liquid fertilizer production

With ever ever-growing population worldwide, the need to produce more food is increasing. Fertilizers are essential to sustain a sufficient and healthy plant growth, with nitrogen fertilizer being the main required plant nutrient.However, the primary method of producing nitrogen fertiliser is incredibly energy-intensive and significantly contributes to climate change.

Global warming is the greatest challenge of our time, and it is more urgent than ever to act fast on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from current chemical manufacturing processes.

Plasma technology provides a sustainable, fossil fuel-free method for nitrogen fixation into liquid nitrogen fertilizer for controlled on farm application. This project combines an atmospheric pressure plasma process with a catalyst, aiming to provide a tailored plasma catalyst process to improve the energy efficiency with controlled production of nitrogen products such as NO₃ and NH₄.

The project will build on the cutting-edge research by Dr Zaenab Abd-Allah and Dr David Sawtell, which has been developed through a Royal Society Research Grant and a proof-of-concept fund to further investigate new methods for improving the energy efficiency of the plasma-based process.  

Project aims and objectives

The project aims to improve the efficiency of the plasma nitrogen fixation process through the development of tailored plasma-catalysts.

Objectives:

1. Design, build and commission a suitable plasma system for nitrogen fixation.
2. Investigate the effect of plasma operation parameters on the formation of nitrogen fertilizers in water.
3. Investigate the effect of tailored plasma catalysts on improving the yield of nitrogen fertilizers in water.
4.  Investigate the required parameters and catalysts for controlling the concentration of produced nitrogen products.