Research Status and Prospect of Nitrogen Fixation Technology: A Brief Review

Abstract

The energy consumption of nitrogen fixation industry accounts for 2% of the world. The development of new nitrogen fixation technology based on renewable energy is of great significance for realizing energy conservation and emission reduction. The synthesis of ammonia by H-B method has low energy consumption and large scale, but the reaction conditions of high temperature and high pressure with catalysts and the high requirements for the stability of the power system make it incompatible with the regional and instability properties of renewable energy such as photovoltaic and wind power. The new nitrogen fixation technology represented by plasma technology and photoelectric catalytic nitrogen fixation technology has made remarkable progresses, with the advantages of mild conditions and environment friendliness, which provides a new direction for the future development of nitrogen fixation technology. The review of nitrogen fixation technology development, e.g. photoelectric catalytic nitrogen fixation and the photoelectric catalytic nitrogen fixation are presented. The analysis of the nitrogen fixation mechanism, energy consumption are introduced, which is expected to reduce the feasibility of nitrogen fixation energy consumption. This paper systematically summarizes the research status and looks forward the future development trend. It’s proposed that the coordinated nitrogen fixation by non-equilibrium plasma and catalyst will be the key to reduce the energy consumption and improve the yield of plasma nitrogen fixation, which has a broad development prospect.