Feeding and Powering the World - Capturing Sunlight to Split Water and Generate Fertilizer and Fuels.pdf

In this collaborative research program the expertise of nine research groups has been combined to address critical, multi-disciplinary challenges in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: the production of hydrogen, the reduction of carbon dioxide to useable fuel, and the reduction of nitrogen to synthetic fertilizer. Currently, nearly all hydrogen is synthesized from non-renewable carbon sources and carbon dioxide is treated as an abundant waste. Additionally, the Haber-Bosch process for using this hydrogen to reduce nitrogen is energy intensive, which demands further fossil fuel consumption. The program proposed is for a long-range approach (1) to establish technologies to extract hydrogen efficiently and economically from water using sunlight; (2) to establish technologies that use electron/proton pairs to directly reduce carbon dioxide to usable fuels at voltages obtainable by DSC devices; (3) to establish technologies that will fix nitrogen at lower temperatures and pressures, and ultimately (4) to link these technologies with high-voltage solar cells to use electron/proton pairs derived from catalytic water splitting to directly produce molecular hydrogen fuel, reduce carbon dioxide to produce fuels and nitrogen in one cell to produce ammonia - a key component of synthetic fertilizer.

The reduction of carbon dioxide and molecular nitrogen with hydrogen are critical processes to fuel and food production. Dramatic improvements in PEC hydrogen-producing cell efficiencies with viable, non-toxic materials, as well as the low-pressure, low-temperature reduction of molecular nitrogen are desirable for practical, sustainable fertilizer synthesis. The importance of efforts improving the route to synthetic fertilizer should not be understated. As such, a key aspect to sustainable funding is public awareness and involvement of the community through outreach. The critical goal of heightening public awareness through science cafes and public service announcements directed at the K-12, community college, and university levels as well as at the general public is also a key priority.