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Review
. 2018 May 25;360(6391):eaar6611.
doi: 10.1126/science.aar6611.

Beyond fossil fuel-driven nitrogen transformations

Jingguang G Chen  1   2 , Richard M Crooks  3 , Lance C Seefeldt  4 , Kara L Bren  5 , R Morris Bullock  6 , Marcetta Y Darensbourg  7 , Patrick L Holland  8 , Brian Hoffman  9 , Michael J Janik  10 , Anne K Jones  11 , Mercouri G Kanatzidis  9 , Paul King  12 , Kyle M Lancaster  13 , Sergei V Lymar  2 , Peter Pfromm  14 , William F Schneider  15 , Richard R Schrock  16
Affiliations
Review

Beyond fossil fuel-driven nitrogen transformations

Jingguang G Chen et al. Science. .

Abstract

Nitrogen is fundamental to all of life and many industrial processes. The interchange of nitrogen oxidation states in the industrial production of ammonia, nitric acid, and other commodity chemicals is largely powered by fossil fuels. A key goal of contemporary research in the field of nitrogen chemistry is to minimize the use of fossil fuels by developing more efficient heterogeneous, homogeneous, photo-, and electrocatalytic processes or by adapting the enzymatic processes underlying the natural nitrogen cycle. These approaches, as well as the challenges involved, are discussed in this Review.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Atom and energy economy of nitrogen fixation. The numerical values represent standard (for gaseous reactants and products and liquid H2O, as defined in ref. 14) Gibbs free energies in kJ/mol of fixed N2 in the direction of the arrows. All thermochemical data are from ref. , except for H2NOH (ref. 16).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Linear scaling between nitrogen binding energy and activation barrier for N2 dissociation. TOF = turnover frequency (from ref. 22).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
FeMo-cofactor with Fe in rust, S in yellow, C in gray, Mo in magenta, and O in red. Made from PDB: 1M1N
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Partial Pourbaix diagram for the N2-H2O system showing lines corresponding to N2 reduction to NH4+/NH3 and N2 oxidation to NO3− . Lines a and b straddle the region of water stability (reduction to H2 and oxidation to O2, respectively). See ref. for details and refs. 15 and 19 for primary data.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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