Ammonia rarely makes headlines, but much of modern life depends on it. The compound of nitrogen and hydrogen is the key ingredient in the fertilizers that help feed roughly half of the world’s population. It is also attracting serious attention as a carbon-free fuel for ships, power plants and heavy industry.
The problem is how we make it. Nearly all of the world’s ammonia comes from the Haber-Bosch process, a century-old technology that forces the nitrogen from air and hydrogen together at temperatures of 400 to 500 C and pressures more than 200 times that of the atmosphere.
