Ammonia as the source of most fertilizers has become one of the most important chemicals globally. It also is being increasingly considered as an easily transported carrier of hydrogen energy that can be generated from “stranded” renewable-energy resources. However, the traditional Haber–Bosch process for the production of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and fossil fuels is a high temperature and pressure process that is energy intensive, currently producing more than 1.6% of global CO₂ emissions. An ambient temperature, electrochemical synthesis of ammonia is an attractive alternative approach, but has, to date, not been achieved at high efficiency. We report in this work the use of ionic liquids that have high N₂ solubility as electrolytes to achieve high conversion efficiency of 60% for N₂ electro-reduction to ammonia on a nanostructured iron catalyst under ambient conditions.

中文翻译：

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在环境温度和压力下在离子液体中由氮电合成氨

氨作为大多数肥料的来源已成为全球最重要的化学物质之一。越来越多的人将其视为氢能的易于运输的载体，可以从“搁浅”的可再生能源中产生氢能。但是，用于从大气氮和化石燃料生产氨的传统哈伯-博世工艺是高温和高压工艺，需要消耗大量能源，目前其二氧化碳排放量占全球CO ₂排放量的1.6％以上。在环境温度下，氨的电化学合成是一种有吸引力的替代方法，但是迄今为止尚未以高效率实现。我们在这项工作中报告使用高N ₂的离子液体在环境条件下，作为一种电解质具有良好的溶解性，可在纳米结构的铁催化剂上实现60％的高转化效率，以将N ₂电还原为氨。