FMSG: Electrochemical Upcycling of Waste Nitrates for Eco-Manufacturing of Nitrogen-Based Chemicals

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Nitrogen-based compounds are indispensable chemicals critically valuable to many industrial applications. However, today they are manufactured directly or indirectly from ammonia. Ammonia is manufactured via the Haber-Bosch process and demands heavy use of fossil fuels, high temperature, and pressure. This results in large carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, huge amounts of nitrate are generated as a notorious and hazardous pollutant in wastewaters from many industrial processes and as agricultural run-off. Costly mitigation of nitrate pollution is often required to maintain healthy ecological systems. Led by Professors Wenzhen Li and Mark Mba-Wright at Iowa State University, and Professor Shuang Gu at Wichita State University, the team is conducting pioneering research on “electrochemical nitrate upcycling”. This process is turning harmful nitrate wastes into useful nitrogen-based chemicals, without continuously depleting the dwindling fossil energy sources. By leveraging inexpensive and over-generated wind electricity, especially in Midwest agricultural areas, the proposed innovative eco-manufacturing system could lay the foundation for distributed, cost-effective, and ecofriendly future manufacturing of versatile nitrogen-based chemicals. Fusing the interests from chemical industry, power plants, and environmental sectors, the project is strengthening American leadership in advanced manufacturing by helping address three grand global challenges: sustainability, climate change, and clean water. This project is jointly funded by the Division of Chemistry, the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems, and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).The project team led by Professors Li (Iowa State), Mba-Wright (Iowa State), and Gu (Wichita State), focuses its research on the desirable transition from waste nitrate to valuable hydroxylamine (NH2OH) and its useful derivatives, by integrating their expertise across nitrate concentrating & polymer science, selective nitrate reduction & nitrate electrochemistry, techno-economic analysis & data-driven decision making, and device engineering & system integration. This project aims to 1) acquire the fundamental material sciences of both nitrate-reduction catalysts and nitrate-exchange polymers; 2) advance the scientific understanding of functional processes including selective nitrate reduction, nitrate concentrating, and hydroxylamine separation; and 3) examine the promising future manufacturing system based on the “electrochemical nitrate upcycling” for nitrogen-based chemicals. The achieved research outcomes are to be incorporated into existing elective courses. A teaching module on eco-manufacturing is to be developed for local community college students. The team is actively working with the Bioeconomy Institute and Electric Power Research Center at Iowa State, with a long-term goal of producing a new generation workforce in the fields of advanced manufacturing. This project is jointly funded by the Division of Chemistry, the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems, and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.