# Ammonia at ambient conditions

- kind: problem
- status: open
- year: 1960

**Statement.** Can nitrogen be reduced to ammonia efficiently at room temperature and pressure?

Haber–Bosch uses about 1–2% of world energy and emits over 1% of global CO2. Nitrogenase enzymes do it at room temperature. Electrochemical routes are promising, but many reported results were later traced to contamination, so the field adopted strict isotope-labeling protocols.

## What would settle it

15N isotope-labeled yield under a standard protocol

## Sources

- [Wikipedia: Nitrogen fixation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation)

[Energy and catalysis](/wiki/Space:energy-chemistry.md) · [Chemistry and matter](/wiki/Continent:chemistry.md)

## Relations to this page

- related to [nitrogen-fixation](/wiki/Problem:nitrogen-fixation.md) — The original curation links this problem to Ammonia at ambient conditions; the argument for the link has not been written yet.

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