Report Title | On the Electrosynthesis of Hydrogen and Ammonia: Challenges and New Approaches |
Reporter | Prof. Alexandr N. Simonov |
Affiliation | School of Chemistry, Monash University |
Time | 10:00, Thursday, November 20, 2025 |
Location | First Floor Lecture Hall, Environment and Resources Building,USTC |
Hosted by | State Key Laboratory of Precision and Intelligent Chemistry |
Abstract | Hydrogen and ammonia are some of the most important commodity chemicals, and both will likely find even broader applications as carbon-free energy carriers in the immediate future. To make this vision a reality, robust renewable-powered electrochemical methods to produce H2 and NH3 from genuinely renewable resources only, viz. water and nitrogen gas, are needed. While these technologies, especially water electrolysis, have been the focus of intense research and development over significant periods of time, both are facing major economic barriers on their pathway towards genuinely broad industrial implementation. The talk will highlight our selected recent developments aiming to overcome these cost-driven obstacles in water electrolysis through elimination of some of the most significant contributors to the cost of the produced hydrogen. The much less mature ammonia electrosynthesis technology is still at a stage of resolving fundamental limitations of the process in terms of the selectivity, productivity and energy efficiency. Factors responsible for these performance losses are still under debate and are challenging to identify. We aim to address this through our research at different scales and using online spectroscopic techniques. The talk will highlight several key challenges of nitrogen electroreduction to ammonia and our recent progress towards resolution thereof. |
About the Reporter | Associate Professor Alexandr N. Simonov is a physical chemist specialising in electrochemistry, materials science and sustainable technologies. Research in his group is aimed at understanding and designing new effective ways to generate and use renewable electricity for the sustainable energy and chemistry technologies. His major research focuses on the development of materials, electrode architectures and practical electrolytic devices for the production of hydrogen through splitting of water, reduction of nitrogen to ammonia, as well as selective oxidation of ammonia to nitrates and nitrites. He collaborates with Australian and German industry on several projects aiming to develop new cost-effective water electrolysers. He is a co-founder of a spin-out company Jupiter Ionics Pty Ltd. working on the commercialisation of the Monash technologies for the renewable ammonia and fertiliser production. |
