Currently NZ faces a fertilizer import (~$495M-USD) dependency issue arising from feedstock shortage due to depletion of natural gas reserves. Electrocatalytic production of ammonia fertilizer uses ionic NOX as the starting point (NO2-, NO3-) as opposed to nitrogen via traditional Haber Bosch. Ionic NOX can be produced from irrigation/farm run-off water, present at 100-1000PPM. The required feed concentration for efficient production of electrocatalytic ammonia is in the range of 2000PPM to 5000PPM and above. Thus, there is an opportunity for a novel process for concentrating Ionic NOX by a factor of 5-10 to enable the production of ammonia fertilizer from low NOX level sources.

The proposed summer research project is a pilot scale demonstration of a photovoltaic floating platform containing a concentrating device based on the capacitive deionization (CDI) stack design recently published by our team. Recent trials conducted at the University of New South Wales in Sydney in collaboration with the OZAmmonia team demonstrated that our CDI stack could effectively concentrate low levels of ionic NOX up to the desired range compatible with a range of suitable catalyst.

The proposed future collaboration is a floating platform combining UoW, UNSW catalyst technology and Mincarb (fibreglass floating platform) to produce a decentralised solution to fertilizer production that has a minimal land footprint. The technoeconomic analysis would accelerate commercialisation of a novel idea that contributes to fertilizer security, reduces impact of fertilizer run-off on the environment, and catalyse early innovators to reduce the import dependency by $14.6M USD.

Roles

We are looking for enthusiastic participants for the following roles:

•Electrode Production Line

•Fibreglass Floating Platform Fabrication

•Power Management and Solar Power Design

•Fluidics Team

•Scientific Team (Characterisation and Analytics)

Further Info

To express intertest or apply, please go to the following link

https://roles.mincarb.com/web/index.php/recruitmentApply/jobs.html

Stay tuned for further announcements.