Single-atom catalysts enabled catalytic ammonia combustion at 1,100°C

Single-atom catalysts enabled catalytic ammonia combustion at 1,100°C

Joule

10.1016/j.joule.2025.102030

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2025.102030

Yankun Du, Bingqing Yao, Liang Xu, Shangchen Lu, Chaokai Xu, Peijie Han, Sheng Dai, Sikai Wang, Shibo Xi, Boon Siong Neo, Ning Yan, Qian He

Combustion, Catalysis, emissions, Ammonia utilization

12 June 2025

Du, Y., Yao, B., Xu, L., Lu, S., Xu, C., Han, P., Dai, S., Wang, S., Xi, S., Neo, B. S., Yan, N., & He, Q. (2025). Single-atom catalysts enabled catalytic ammonia combustion at 1,100°C. Joule, 9(8), 102030. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2025.102030

Green NH3 is a promising renewable fuel but suffers from having poor combustion characteristics. High-temperature catalytic ammonia combustion (HT-CAC) provides an attractive solution to improve the combustibility of NH3 and allows high-quality heat to be extracted with reduced harmful emissions. Achieving HT-CAC is a difficult task due to (i) demanding stability requirements for catalysts and (ii) potentially high NOx emissions. Here, we report that atomically dispersed Pt on 10%ZrO2-Al2O3 can facilitate the HT-CAC process. The catalyst ignites NH3 combustion just above 200 ℃ and has excellent stability when operated at 1100 ℃. The presence of the catalyst also reduces the NOx emission to around 50 ppm without detectable NH3 slip. This work shows that combining single atom catalysts with refractory support materials is an effective strategy for designing catalysts for HT-CAC, which will in turn help to decarbonize many “hard-to-abate” sectors such as industrial heating.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

This research / project is supported by the A*STAR, National Research Foundation - RIE2025 USS Low Carbon Energy Research PHASE 2 PROGRAMME HETFI DIRECTED HYDROGEN PROGRAMME
Grant Reference no. : U2102d2005; U2102d2006; U2305d4003

This research / project is supported by the National Research Foundation - NRF Fellowship
Grant Reference no. : NRF-NRFF11-2019-0002

https://oar.a-star.edu.sg/communities-collections/articles/23264

2542-4351

Institute of High Performance Computing