Solar Urea: Towards a Sustainable Fertilizer Industry
Abstract
Urea, an agricultural fertilizer, nourishes humanity. The century-old Bosch–Meiser process provides the world's urea. It is multi-step, consumes enormous amounts of non-renewable energy, and has a large CO₂ footprint. Thus, developing an eco-friendly synthesis for urea is a priority. Herein we report a single-step Pd/LTA-3A catalyzed synthesis of urea from CO₂ and NH₃ under ambient conditions powered solely by solar energy. Pd nanoparticles serve the dual function of catalyzing the dissociation of NH₃ and providing the photothermal driving force for urea formation, while the absorption capacity of LTA-3A removes by-product H₂O to shift the equilibrium towards urea production. The solar urea conversion rate from NH₃ and CO₂ is 87 μmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹. This advance represents a first step towards the use of solar energy in urea production. It provides insights into green fertilizer production, and inspires the vision of sustainable, modular plants for distributed production of urea on farms.
Additional Information
© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH. Issue Online: 27 December 2021; Version of Record online: 23 November 2021; Accepted manuscript online: 03 November 2021; Manuscript revised: 15 October 2021; Manuscript received: 29 July 2021. G.A.O. acknowledges the financial support of the following agencies: Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI); Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure (MEDI); Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MOECC); Best in Science (BIS); Ministry of Research Innovation and Science (MRIS) Low Carbon Innovation Fund (LCIF); Ontario Centre of Excellence Solutions 2030 Challenge Fund; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; Imperial Oil; University of Toronto Connaught Innovation Fund (CIF); Connaught Global Challenge (CGC) Fund; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). C.Qian. acknowledges the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for a postdoctoral scholarship. M.X. acknowledges the Connaught Foundation for the graduate scholarship to support the doctoral research. C.M. acknowledges the financial support of University of Toronto Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellowship and the National Supercomputer Center in Shenzhen (China) for providing high-performance computation. We thank Dr. Mireille Ghoussoub for the technical help with TGA, Dr. Jason Tam for the performing HRTEM and EELS, Dr. Jack Sheng for conducting NMR, Ilya Gourevich for the contribution on ESEM. We thank the Ontario Center for the Characterization of Advanced Materials (OCCAM) for access to state-of-the-art equipment. The authors declare no conflict of interest.Attached Files
Accepted Version - anie.202110158.pdf
Supplemental Material - anie202110158-sup-0001-misc_information.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 112238
- DOI
- 10.1002/anie.202110158
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20211206-223250999
- Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation
- Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure
- Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change
- Best in Science (BIS)
- Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science
- Low Carbon Innovation Fund (LCIF)
- Ontario Centre of Excellence
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
- Imperial Oil
- University of Toronto
- Connaught Global Challenge (CGC) Fund
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Connaught Foundation
- Created
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2021-12-07Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-01-04Created from EPrint's last_modified field