Faraday Earth, a startup using non-thermal plasma to make green ammonia, has developed a new system which could reach a levelised cost for ammonia of around US$500/t, close to fossil fuel-derived grey ammonia, the backbone of most nitrogen-based fertilizers.
While the traditional Haber-Bosch process uses high heat, high pressure, and catalysts to force nitrogen and hydrogen to react, producing ammonia in huge, centralised plants, Faraday Earth instead uses a high-voltage electric field to create non-thermal plasma.
A highly energised gas sometimes called the ‘fourth state of matter,’ plasma can ‘excite’ nitrogen molecules and make them reactive.
“This is key because nitrogen gas is notoriously inert,” said Debayan Saha who founded Faraday Earth in 2023 with Shashi Ranjan, PhD.
Each molecule consists of two nitrogen atoms held together by a strong triple bond. Once activated in the plasma reactor, the nitrogen can combine with green hydrogen, which Faraday Earth can produce via electrolysis – splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen – or procure from other low-carbon sources such as naturally occurring geological hydrogen.
Once produced, the ammonia can be liquefied for direct injection as a fertilizer, dissolved in water to make aqueous ammonia for industrial applications, or used as a feedstock for other fertilizers and chemicals. However, Faraday Earth’s initial focus is on ammonia as the end product.
Progress
Faraday Earth has built a demo unit to show its tech in action and secured letters of intent, pilot agreement offers, purchase orders, and at least one paid customer. Interest is coming from existing ammonia producers, distributors, and suppliers serving markets including fertilizers, cold storage, meat processing, and other industrial applications, says Ranjan. “We have a MoU signed for commercialisation with one of the top global companies in this space.”
Rather than building large, centralised plants, Faraday Earth envisages containerised units – typically around 40 ft by 10 ft for larger systems – that can produce a few tons of ammonia per day. Customers with greater demand could stack multiple modules, while smaller users could deploy smaller systems.
This could open up decentralised ammonia production for fertilizer and industrial uses, especially in places where logistics make delivered ammonia expensive, claimed Saha.
The target
As for costs, Saha stated: “Rather than just looking at the cost of manufacturing, the levelised cost of ammonia is the true parameter that we measure (including CAPEX, operating costs, energy inputs, maintenance, etc). We foresee levelised cost in the range of about US$500/t in the upcoming time periods. If you can reach the theoretical limit, then it’s potentially even cheaper.”
By way of comparison, he said: “Grey ammonia [produced via Haber Bosch] before the war [with Iran], was in the range of US$300-700/t.”
Faraday Earth’s system is designed to pair well with renewable power because plasma can be switched on and off quickly, avoiding the long heating and cooling cycles associated with thermal processes, added Saha, who stated that the Iran war has brought both the price and availability of key fertilizer inputs into sharp focus in recent weeks.
Ryan Lee, investment associate at AgFunder, which has recently invested in Faraday Earth, said green synthesis of key commodities, “represents a fundamental decentralisation opportunity and Faraday Earth is developing technology that tackles bottlenecks in how the world produces essential inputs. Localising production in agrarian economies, especially in the Global South, has the potential to reshape supply chain dependencies and decarbonise critical industries.”