What does your research focus on?
This research focuses on a waste-based, CO2 aware, ammonia production process, leveraging emerging membrane technologies in concert with local infrastructure. This process provides a viable route to green ammonia and to green fertilizers, offering an effective strategy to address multiple sustainability/sustainable development needs simultaneously. Ammonia is the most produced nitrogen-based fertilizer and is the second most produced chemical compound globally after sulfuric acid with fossil fuels being the main feedstock for its production. Ammonia production technologies currently in use require either a steady supply of water in high volumes to operate and/or result in high CO2 production. Therefore, to replace existing high impact ammonia production technologies, a techno-environmental assessment of a new sustainability-driven waste-based process producing green ammonia was devised using life cycle thinking and sustainable design principles, targeting efficiency, carbon emissions, water, and power use competitiveness. This was to determine whether a waste-based process designed first around CO2 capture and utilization can compete on the basis of key performance indicators for sustainability or displace existing ammonia technologies. The project concept takes a blended approach to anticipatory/prospective design, so mature technologies for base operations are used with more novel components as a means of enabling non-incremental technological advances. Each selected processing unit in the modelled system was chosen based on its potential to decrease environmental impact and increase product yields, while functioning successfully in concert with the other technology components.
How did you do this research?
An integrated modelling platform of multiple configurations of core waste-based processes, integrating several carbon capture/utilization options to optimize and assess the technological performance was designed and modelled in Visual basic in Applications (VBA) software. This model can be tuned to reflect various operating conditions and assesses whether the incorporation of internal energy generation or external renewable energy sources would be more appropriate for a given process configuration. Finally, a life cycle analysis, based on the modelling platform was designed and carried out to assess the environmental impacts of a variety of possible configurations to evaluate the potential efficiency and greenhouse gas intensity of the process.
What are the potential impacts and benefits of your research?
This timely research touches on vital global challenges associated with food security, energy storage, and environmental sustainability. Specifically, waste-to-sustainable ammonia could be one solution to the CO2 shortage and energy crisis currently being experienced in the UK. The green ammonia process as designed here can reduce waste and prevent the release of additional CO2 from ammonia production, while avoiding fossil-based alternatives and decreasing emissions from biogenic waste sources. Since ammonia is an indirect hydrogen storage compound without the energy carrier limitations of hydrogen, it shows promising prospects as an energy carrier for a wide range of applications.
Tell us more about yourself.
I am a remote location PhD student in the Chemical and Biological Engineering department at The University of Sheffield, currently based in California, USA. Due to Covid-19, with limited opportunities to attend conferences and to collaborate with fellow researchers, I tried to use this time to focus on my core research, resulting in the publication of four research papers in peer reviewed journals.