In order to supply our agriculture and industries with an available source of nitrogen, we rely on a chemical process that requires 400˚C of heat and more pressure than at the bottom of the world’s deepest lake. It’s no wonder that ammonia production releases 500 million tons of CO2 annually (3% of the world’s carbon emissions). Producing green ammonia is a tall order that has puzzled chemists for decades.

With inspiration from nature, Nitrofix has designed a readily-available catalyst that can produce ammonia at room temperature and pressure, thereby nearly eliminating the heat and pressure (and thus carbon) costs. This might sound too good to be true, but their electrochemical process can produce ammonia using the voltage of a standard AA battery. Using the innovation from a renowned Weizmann Institute lab, they’ve already produced ammonia at the benchtop in the first weeks of IndieBio, and they are currently finishing an industrially scalable prototype in time for Demo Day.