Authors
Ngoc-Trung Nguyen, Dinh-Duong Pham, Duong T H Truong, Dijon A Hoogeveen, Mazin Al-Alawi, Thi Mung Vu, Koustav Banerjee, Sebastian O Fürer, Peter Strasser, Hoang-Long Du, Douglas R MacFarlane, Alexandr N Simonov
Published in
Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English). Pages e2841666. Sep 10, 2026. Epub Sep 10, 2026.
Abstract
Sustainable ammonia production can be achieved via an electrochemical process coupling the lithium redox-mediated nitrogen reduction (Li-NRR) with hydrogen oxidation, but a more practical approach uses water oxidation (the oxygen evolution reaction; OER) as the anode reaction. However, coupling the Li-NRR and the OER is restricted by incompatibility of the anhydrous conditions required for nitrogen reduction with water. Aiming to resolve this, we investigated an electrolyser with an electrochemical palladium-based membrane, which transforms protons generated by the OER to palladium hydride in aqueous media and releases protons into non-aqueous Li-NRR media to sustain ammonia production. The hydride formation/oxidation mechanism, validated through experiments with deuterated water, ensures exclusive membrane selectivity to protons, and is facilitated by the palladium-gold electrocatalysts. We demonstrate ammonia electrosynthesis from nitrogen (15 bar) and water at a faradaic efficiency of 59 ± 4%, yield rate of 20 ± 1 nmol s-1 cm-2 and energy efficiency of 9.0 ± 0.7% over more than two days. However, deeper investigation of the system revealed ammonia-promoted corrosion of the palladium-based membrane-a challenge that needs to be addressed in the future developments of this technology.
PMID:
42723381
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 11 Sep 2026.
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