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Ammonia may cabal thought process of off aroma , but the humans is wholly dependant on the smelly stuff as a fertilizer and for economic consumption in myriad other industries . trouble is , nearly all the ammonia water bring on today is heavily pendant on fossil fuels . make the compound acquittance more than 450 million metrical tons of carbon dioxide every yr , accordingto the International Energy Agency , around 2 % of global discharge .
There are tidy sum of alternatives , but none of them have been capable to compete with the foul position quo . Part of the trouble is that the process to make ammonium hydroxide , known as Haber - Bosch , has benefited from more than a century of refinement .
One inauguration , though , hopes to give Haber - Bosch a run for its money by reducing the number of steps it take to get from raw ingredient to finished ammonia . NitroFix , a finalist in theStartup Battlefieldcompetition atTechCrunch Disrupt 2024 , transform water and air into the vital chemical compound by eat the two through a gimmick know as an electrolyzer .
NitroFix is n’t the first to do so , but Centennial State - founder and CEO Ophira Melamed thinks a proprietary compound her fellowship use gives it an boundary . The accelerator , which help facilitate key chemical response , shape when submerged in water , something Melamed said is strange . That allows the company to make hydrogen in the same container where it ’s used to make ammonia .
Other approach tend to split water first to get hydrogen , which adds costly and vim - intensive steps . “ There is no additional stride of H production , ” Melamed assure TechCrunch .
The company licensed the core technology from the Weizmann Institute in Israel , where an former interpretation was develop . Since then , NitroFix has continued to work on it , preparing it for industrial use . In the science lab at Weizmann , the accelerator worked as a powder suspended in water supply . Today , it ’s fixed to a panel that ’s about one square foot in size of it .
NitroFix remains focussed on rectify that part of the electrolyzer , known as the cathode . “ There are vulgar electrolyzers that are already on the securities industry producing H , ” Melamed said . “ We would like to take whatever is not the cathode — somebody else produce it — to use it in our system of rules and to center on the affectionateness of the applied science , which is cathode performance . ” NitroFix plans to function with another society to produce completed electrolyzers .
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With the novel cathode , the inauguration can produce one metric short ton of ammonium hydroxide using nine megawatt - hours of electricity , about the same as an electrified Haber - Bosch cognitive process , Melamed say , though operate other share of the plant bestow one more megawatt - hour to NitroFix ’s totality . “ We should think back that the Haber - Bosch cognitive process is more than 100 years old , so the efficiency is quite high . We are much lower , but we have a plan to accomplish higher efficiency , ” she said .
NitroFix raised $ 3.1 million in 2023 in a ejaculate round led by Clean Energy Ventures , with involution from High House Investments , SOSV , UM6P Ventures , and Zero Carbon Capital .
The startup intends to target fellowship in regions with high innate throttle costs , which drives up ammonia product costs , and ship’s company like pharmaceutical manufacturers or intellectual nourishment producers that might prefer product on - website to avoid supply chain disruptions .
“ The current need for ammonia is around 200 million [ metric ] tons , and it ’s go to rage up to about 700 million tons of ammonia . By 2050 , you will need raw facilities , ” Melamed said .
By using electrolyzers , NitroFix ’s devices are smaller than the mega - factories that use Haber - Bosch . “ The idea is to have humble output social unit that would be site in different places around the world , near the place where they are needed , ” Melamed said .
