Photosynthesis of NH from NO Using CH in Homogenous Rhenium Catalysis.

We present Re catalysis of one-pot synthesis of NH from NO using CH as a reductant under UV light irradiation at room temperature. NO leads to environmental issues such as water contamination, eutrophication, and biodiversity loss. In a natural system and a sewage facility, NO can be detoxified to N using hydrogen donors by a microbial process. However, it is better to convert NO to NH rather than N. To develop a desirable process of NO to NH for a sustainable society, it is required that the reducing agent is derived from a renewable resource/energy. Thus, we turned our attention to CH, which has a high affinity with renewable resource/energy since it can be produced from livestock waste. Therefore, our system reported here is to directly convert NO to NH using CH with light energy.