UAH researcher wins 2024 ORAU Powe Junior Faculty Award to explore novel method of synthesizing ammonia with potentially global implications

Dr. Agnieszka Truszkowska, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, has won the 2024 Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Award. The national honor is a one-year $5,000 commitment aimed at enriching the research skills and professional growth of young faculty members at ORAU member institutions. Truszkowska’s research focuses on multiscale modeling in microtechnology-based devices and porous materials to develop new models that advance these systems with applications in chemical, petroleum and biomedical engineering, as well as biotechnology.

ORAU is a 501(c)(3), not-for-profit organization that works with government agencies, universities and corporate entities to advance national priorities in science, education, security and health. The UAH researcher was selected from a field of 174 applicants, representing 91 ORAU member institutions, specifically in recognition of the potential of her goal to improve chemical reactors for ammonia synthesis.

“Ammonia is an essential component of the most common agricultural fertilizers, making it a critical chemical produced globally on a massive scale,” Truszkowska notes in her proposal. “Other usages include household cleaners and solvents, with new ones emerging as ammonia is being reconsidered as a fuel. Given the powerful impact any innovation would have on the economy and sustainability of such a process, there are, unsurprisingly, many ongoing efforts to intensify and modernize packed-bed reactors.”

Synthesis of ammonia is performed in “packed-bed” reactors, a common, traditional class of chemical reactors where a hollow tube, pipe or other vessel is filled with a packing material that may also contain catalyst particles or adsorbents such as zeolite pellets, granular activated carbon, etc., to help improve the contact between two phases in a chemical process.

“In these reactors, the catalyst is loaded inside support pellets that are randomly poured into it, forming a porous medium,” the researcher explains. “The reactants flow through the voids between the pellets and diffuse into the pellets to form the products [in this case, ammonia]. All this is accompanied by heat supply or removal as the reactions either produce or require a substantial amount of heat. Because the catalyst – hence the reaction – are located inside of the pellets, the slow mass and heat transfer make this process highly inefficient.”

The project aims to guide the design of packed beds with an eye towards superior performance, while only minimally manipulating the traditional pellet-packing approach. “Ammonia reactors are commonly assembled by randomly packing spherical pellets loaded with catalyst, resulting in an uncharted internal structure that is the most critical aspect of reactor performance,” Truszkowska concludes.

“We want to use a set of readily available measurables and an established optimization algorithm to find the most appropriate, three-dimensional digital representation of packed beds. We will devise strategies to control and guide these characteristics to improve this essential chemical process. The developed framework will be readily applicable to other chemical reactors that utilize packed-bed technology as well, and will enable optimization and improvement of existing ammonia synthesis technology with minimal changes to current designs.”