Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, 80 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S3H6, Canada.
Key Laboratory of Pesticide & Chemical Biology of Ministry of Education, Institute of Environmental & Applied Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, P. R. China.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2022 Jan 3;61(1):e202110158. doi: 10.1002/anie.202110158. Epub 2021 Nov 23.
Urea, an agricultural fertilizer, nourishes humanity. The century-old Bosch-Meiser process provides the world's urea. It is multi-step, consumes enormous amounts of non-renewable energy, and has a large CO footprint. Thus, developing an eco-friendly synthesis for urea is a priority. Herein we report a single-step Pd/LTA-3A catalyzed synthesis of urea from CO and NH under ambient conditions powered solely by solar energy. Pd nanoparticles serve the dual function of catalyzing the dissociation of NH and providing the photothermal driving force for urea formation, while the absorption capacity of LTA-3A removes by-product H O to shift the equilibrium towards urea production. The solar urea conversion rate from NH and CO is 87 μmol g h . This advance represents a first step towards the use of solar energy in urea production. It provides insights into green fertilizer production, and inspires the vision of sustainable, modular plants for distributed production of urea on farms.
尿素，一种农业肥料，滋养着人类。百年来博施-迈耶工艺为全球供应尿素。该工艺步骤繁多，耗费大量不可再生能源，且 CO 足迹巨大。因此，开发环保型尿素合成方法是当务之急。在此，我们报告了一种在环境条件下，由 Pd/LTA-3A 催化，仅利用太阳能，从 CO 和 NH 一步合成尿素的方法。Pd 纳米颗粒同时起到催化 NH 解离和提供光热驱动力以促进尿素形成的作用，而 LTA-3A 的吸附能力则去除副产物 H O，使平衡向尿素生成方向移动。NH 和 CO 经太阳能转化为尿素的速率为 87 μmol g h 。这一进展代表着在利用太阳能生产尿素方面迈出的第一步。它为绿色肥料生产提供了新的思路，并激发了在农场分布式生产尿素的可持续、模块化工厂的愿景。
