Thomas Jaramillo, Ph.D. - US grants

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of nitrogen fertilizer on-farm from air, water, and renewable electricity. The $78 B global fertilizer marketplace is served today by this process through a complicated and expensive supply chain to the world?s 4 billion acres of farmland. Once on the farm, the fertilizer is applied in bulk, and more than half of it is lost to gas emissions and runoff, potentially damaging downstream ecosystems and poisoning nearby water supplies. The aim of this proposed technology is to offer an alternative method to produce environmentally sustainable fertilizer. The proposed system uses solar panels as an environmentally friendly power source, and applying fertilizer slowly instead of in bulk mitigates the problems with runoff and gas emissions.

This I-Corps project is based on the development of a plasma reactor powered by renewable electricity that converts air and water into nitrates in an aqueous solution. For the past 115 years, fertilizer has been produced using the Haber-Bosch process and now produces nearly one billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year. The design of the proposed technology is modular, decreasing the costs and allowing use in remote areas and developing nations. This proposed technology produces nitrogen fertilizer on-site intermittently using the power from the solar module and the inputs of air and water. This technology is tightly integrated with the solar array and the farm?s irrigation system to provide growers with on-demand fertilizer. Preliminary studies indicate that the proposed plasma reactor technology appears to be an economically and environmentally sustainable nitrogen fixing technology.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Nitrogen pollution is a Grand Challenge identified by the National Academies. Fertilizer production has outpaced removal of nitrogen from wastewater, leading to continuous losses that threaten aquatic ecosystems and human health. This project aims to meet this challenge by recycling waterborne nitrogen pollutants into high-purity ammonia. The PIs’ approach is unique in its ability to reduce nitrogen emissions and their negative cascade effects; reduce the energy and costs of conventional fertilizer production and wastewater treatment; and address legacy pollution that can persist for decades in coastal ecosystems like the Gulf of Mexico. The overall goal of this EFRI Distributed Chemical Manufacturing research project is to understand, design, and control multifunctional electrochemical processes that enable on-site fertilizer manufacturing and water purification with minimal environmental impacts. The project combines fundamental breakthroughs in novel materials and processes to convert wastewater pollutants into products. The project includes integration of the fundamental discoveries with cost optimization and performance in various wastewaters, as well as prioritizing adoption locations and value propositions for recovery facilities. Because re-engineering the nitrogen cycle is a demanding challenge, it requires the best approaches from the entire U.S. talent pool. Thus, the project team plans to broaden participation by hosting an annual workshop and demonstration day at a Stanford pilot-scale water treatment plant and invite underrepresented K-12 students; local community members; undergraduate researchers; and the project’s industrial advisory board representing fertilizer production, agriculture, and water treatment. The team will also develop workshops for incoming underrepresented undergraduate students, hands-on lab activities in classes, nitrogen-focused modules with K-12 students, and mentored research experiences for high school and undergraduate EFRI Scholars.

Current engineering efforts to rebalance the nitrogen cycle have largely concentrated on the improvement of the Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia or expansion of nitrogen removal from wastewater. This project puts forward a transformative vision: recycling reactive nitrogen (e.g., ammonia, nitrate) in distributed nitrogen refineries that convert fugitive emissions in waste waters into high-purity ammonia. The overall goal of the research is to understand, design, and control multifunctional electrochemical unit processes that enable distributed ammonia manufacturing and water purification with minimal environmental impacts. The project will utilize electrodialysis and nitrate reduction as a platform to benchmark and characterize ammonia-selective catalysts, as well as a treatment process applicable to two ubiquitous wastewaters: municipal wastewater and fertilizer runoff. The project’s objectives are to: (1) understand and control electrocatalytic microenvironments via selective electrochemical reactive separations; (2) establish quantitative material and process innovation targets for energy-efficient, cost-effective, and adaptive processes; and (3) leverage economic and environmental assessments to prioritize local contexts and products for wastewater-derived ammonia manufacturing.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.