A novel electrochemically induced method for ammonia synthesis (eU2A) on demand from urea in alkaline media was demonstrated. A Nickel based electrode was employed as the active catalyst. The effective rate of ammonia generation of the eU2A process at 70 • C is ∼28 times higher than the thermal hydrolysis (THU) of urea. The eU2A operates at lower temperature (55% lower) and pressure (6 times lower) than the THU; this could lead to significant energy savings. The process finds applications on selective catalytic reduction (SCR) for the removal of nitride oxide from combustion systems (e.g., diesel vehicles, power plants, etc. 3-5 However, ammonia is considered a hazardous chemical.6 Therefore, instead of using ammonia, most SCR systems use urea (nontoxic). Urea can be thermally hydrolyzed into ammonia on demand as shown in Eq. 1The thermal conversion of urea to ammonia processes used in power plants -such as urea pyrolysis (540• C) 8 and urea hydrolysis (150• C, 5-6 atm) 9 -are not suitable for mobile engines since the reaction conditions are inaccessible. Current thermal hydrolysis of urea (THU) processes employed in diesel engine vehicles dose urea by injecting urea-water solutions (this mixture is known as diesel effluent fluid, DEF, 32.5% weight urea in deionized water) and use the exhaust temperature to convert urea to ammonia. However, in low-load urban driving, the exhaust temperature goes from 300• C to lower than 130• C. The overall NOx conversion effectiveness in the system is low due to the curtailed urea dosing caused by insufficient conversion of urea. 10 In addition, the quality of the DEF needs to be high since the SCR catalyst can be damaged if there is contamination in DEF (e.g., due to minerals in water used for making DEF 11 ). In this paper, we demonstrate a new technology that allows the electrochemical conversion of urea to ammonia, the eU2A process.
12,13The process allows the production of ammonia on demand by applying a cell voltage as depicted in Fig. 1a. 12,13 This technology could enable decoupling the ammonia production from the exhaust system in diesel engine vehicle SCR applications, as well as portable urea to ammonia reactors.
ExperimentalThe eU2A reactor was built at the Center for Electrochemical Engineering Research and presented schematically in Fig. 1b. A heat jacket with a controller (Econo 12125-14) was used to heat and maintain the temperature of the reagent in the reactor. The eU2A process was performed in a two electrodes system and the cell voltage was controlled by an Arbin BT2000 potentiostat. The anode (working electrode) of the reactor was made by Ni beads and a Ni mesh was used as cathode, refer to Section S1 of supplementary information (SI) for details. Part of the ammonia produced was dissolved in the solution in the reactor, while the rest in vapor phase was captured in a glass vessel containing * Electrochemical Society Student Member. * * Electrochemical Society Fellow. z E-mail: botte@ohio.edu 1 L of 1 M sulfuric acid solution (Fig. 1b). An ammonia ion selec...