Nitric acid is a critical chemical used in the manufacture of a wide range of defense- and civilian-relevant materials, including nitrate fertilizers; explosives for defense, mining, and construction; and industrial chemical manufacturing.
Current nitric acid production is highly centralized, energy- and resource-intensive, and heavily reliant on foreign-supplied precursors. These considerations present a challenge for building and maintaining resilient supply chains for domestic food supply, weapons manufacture, and chemical industry.
Recent advances in electrocatalysis and chemical reactor design may enable highly energy-efficient production of nitric acid directly from air and water. This approach would not only break the dependence on foreign sources for precursor materials, but also reduce supply chain fragility and allow for decentralized production.
The HNO3 program aims to demonstrate nitric acid production at high rate and high energy efficiency from air and water as readily available precursors. The program will entail designing and developing catalysts and incorporating them into a full system to derisk the science, perform initial integration, and identify early-stage scale-up activities of a self-sufficient nitric acid generator from air, water, and energy.
It is anticipated multiple advances in chemistry and engineering will need to be integrated to deliver a system that can produce large amounts of nitric acid in a decentralized fashion, using only air and water as precursor chemicals. Success in this program would help to secure the supply of defense- and civilian-critical chemicals, thereby making the US defense industrial base more resilient.