Many new fuels and energy storage systems are required for the successful energy transition. Ammonia is an excellent candidate to be used as a carbon-free fuel and chemical hydrogen storage because it can be easily liquefied and has twice the energy density of liquid hydrogen. Additionally, ammonia transportation infrastructure already exists around the world.

The current process for producing ammonia (Haber-Bosch process) is problematic because it uses not only nitrogen (from the air) but also hydrogen (from fossil sources) and the annual production is responsible for around 1% of global CO₂ emissions. Therefore, an alternative, carbon-neutral process for producing ammonia is needed, and a great solution is electrochemical synthesis from nitrogen and water using green energy. However, ammonia produced in this way contains some impurities (nitrogen, hydrogen and water) that must be separated.

The aim of this work within the JUMPA program is to develop a purification process for ammonia that is based on selective adsorption on a special carbon molecular sieve (CMS). This is made from electrospun carbon nanofibers (CNF) and is intended to be tailored to the separation problem. The analysis is carried out using static and dynamic gas adsorption experiments of individual gases and gas mixtures as well as scanning electron microscopy. The final step is to develop a pressure swing adsorption process (PSA) on a laboratory scale, which can be used for the direct purification of ammonia from electrolysis.