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Ammonia is crucial for making synthetic fibres, fertilisers and dyes. But
producing it eats up vast amounts of energy—amazingly around 1 per cent of
the world’s energy production. A new catalyst discovered at the Ruhr University
in Bochum, Germany, could make the process far more efficient. Ammonia is
usually made by mixing nitrogen and hydrogen with an iron catalyst and heating
the mixture to around 600 °C at a pressure of nearly 500 atmospheres. The
new catalyst is a compound of barium, ruthenium and magnesium oxide and produces
the same amount of ammonia at half the pressure, so much less energy is needed
to compress the mixture.