Atmospheric Pressure Ammonia Synthesis Using Non-thermal Plasma Assisted Catalysis

This paper described a novel and green approach on catalytic ammonia synthesis using non-thermal plasma (NTP). The process studied in this paper involves the synthesis and absorption of ammonia under atmospheric pressure and low temperature. The effects of operational parameters including applied voltage, frequency, gas component and flow rate on ammonia synthesis under NTP conditions are studied in this paper. In addition, different selected catalysts and absorbents were investigated under different conditions of NTP treatment and the ammonia efficiency was reported and analyzed. Ru catalyst with carbon nanotube support, along with Cs promoter and micro porous absorbents including Molecular Sieve 13X and Amberlyst 15 yield the highest ammonia efficiency in this process. Results further indicated that frequency and applied voltage of 10,000 Hz and 6000 V, with N 2 :H 2 feed ratio of 3:1 provided the optimized efficiency of ammonia synthesis of 2.3 gNH 3 /kWh.