Ammonia may bring to mind a foul odor, but the world is completely dependent on the stinky substance for use in fertilizers and countless other industries. The problem is that almost all of the ammonia currently produced is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency, manufacturing this compound releases more than 450 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, representing about 2% of global emissions.
There are many alternatives, but none of them can combat the current state of pollution. Part of the problem is that the ammonia production process, known as Haber-Bosch, has benefited from more than a century of improvements.
But one startup wants to benefit Haber-Bosch by reducing the number of steps it takes to make ammonia from raw materials. NitroFix, a finalist in TechCrunch Disrupt 2024's Startup Battlefield competition, converts water and air into important compounds by feeding them into a device known as an electrolyzer.
NitroFix isn't the first company to do this, but co-founder and CEO Ofira Melamed believes the unique compound the company uses gives it an edge. The catalyst, which helps accelerate key chemical reactions, works when soaked in water, which is unusual, Melamed said. This will allow the company to produce hydrogen in the same vessels used to produce ammonia.
Other approaches tend to first split water to produce hydrogen, adding a cost- and energy-intensive step. “There are no additional steps to hydrogen production,” Melamed told TechCrunch.
The company licensed the core technology from Israel's Weizmann Institute, where an earlier version was developed. Since then, NitroFix has continued to develop and prepare for industrial applications. In Weizmann's lab, the catalyst worked as a powder suspended in water. Currently, it is fixed in panels that are almost 1 square foot in size.
NitroFix continues to focus on improving the part of the electrolyzer known as the cathode. “There are already common electrolyzers on the market that produce hydrogen,” Melamed says. “We want to use something that is not a cathode, something that someone else has developed, in our system and focus on the core of the technology: cathode performance.” NitroFix, another company We plan to work with them to produce the completed electrolyzer.
Using the new cathode, the startup can produce 1 ton of ammonia using 9 megawatt-hours of electricity, roughly the same as the Haber-Bosch process using electricity, but other parts of the plant coming online will add an additional 1 megawatt-hour, Melamed said. Total NitroFix. “You have to remember that the Haber-Bosch process is over 100 years old, so it has very high efficiencies. There are plans to achieve much lower, but higher efficiencies,” she says. I did.
Image credit: NitroFix
NitroFix raised $3.1 million in a seed round in 2023 led by Clean Energy Ventures with participation from High House Investments, SOSV, UM6P Ventures, and Zero Carbon Capital.
The startup targets companies in regions with high natural gas costs, which drive up ammonia production costs, as well as companies such as pharmaceutical and food manufacturers that may prefer on-site production to avoid supply chain disruptions. I'm going to.
“Currently, we need about 200 million units of ammonia. [metric] Ammonia is expected to increase to approximately 700 million tons. New facilities will be needed by 2050,” Melamed said.
By using electrolyzers, Nitrofix's equipment is smaller than the giant factories using Haber-Bosch. “The idea is to put smaller production units in different parts of the world, near where they are needed,” Melamed said.