Societal and environmental impact. The EU aims are to be climate-neutral by 2050 holding an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. This objective is at the heart of the European Green Deal and in line with the EU’s commitment to global climate action under the Paris Agreement (COP21). Even with the minimum agreement reached in COP25 Chile-Madrid, the agreed text of 1/CMA.2 “re-emphasises with serious concern the urgent need to address the significant gap” between current ambition and the goals to keep the average global temperature rise to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursing efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 ºC above pre-industrial levels”. Looking for the development a low carbon economy to achieve clean energy transition thought climate neutrality, the European Commission has published a new hydrogen strategy this year. Here, the ammonia has been recognized as a real workhorse of the energy scenario. Ammonia can be used as carbon free fuel producing as waste only water and nitrogen being so, one of the best alternatives for the mid/long-term storage of electricity as chemical energy. For instance, as a fuel could be the response to the decarbonization of the maritime shipping because could be directly used in the current combustion engines with slightly modifications.
Industrial and economic impact. Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be one of the most important, and most effective, steps that a country or company can take to reduce its environmental impact and save money. However, in the case of ammonia, the economic impact is not only related with environmental issues. Ammonia is one of the most important chemicals being produced and transported worldwide in huge quantities (180,000 tons annually). It is used as a building block for green chemical industry as well as used as low carbon fertilizer in agriculture. For this reason, to find new technologies to produce ammonia in mild and less energetic conditions will have huge world-wide economic impact. In this sense, cooperative research between the private sector and academia is crucial for the creation of an innovation-friendly market over which an innovative and competitive Europe could be built.
Scientific impact. Developing new photoelectrochemical technologies for ammonia production implies the design of new photoelectrochemical active materials. This fact perfectly meets with Materials Roadmap from SET-Plan criteria where one focus area is dedicated to novel materials solutions or novel combination of known materials to emerge beyond 2020. On the other hand, DEMONIA project considers as fundamental issue to deep in the establishment of structure-activity relationship of the new materials in order to improve both materials themselves and the production process.
The technical and performance validation of the design and development of advanced organic-inorganic hybrid photoelectrodes which compose the first work package (WP1) was duly complete in the expected timeline thereby allowing to reach three important milestones: i) development of hybrid photoelectrodes (related with task 1.1); ii) general characterization and operando structure-reactivity studies (related with task 1.2); and, most important, iii) validation of the photoelectrochemical ammonia production process (related with tasks 1.3). However, at the end of the project, we consider necessary the implementation of more pilot plant studies because lack of definitive results and characterization of reaction performance and products in the solar reactor.
On the other hand, both Market & IP Assessment (WP2), which includes market analysis and report of patentability & FTO study, and Pretechniology transfer (WP3), where a roapmap for the DEMONIA technology has been defined, have been finished.
