Danish climatetech NitroVolt secures €750K for green ammonia production

This week, Danish-based climatetech company NitroVolt raised a Pre-seed round of €750,000 from Swedish venture firm BackingMinds.

The company is developing the "Nitrolyzer" unit, which enables cheaper and local ammonia production using only air, water and electricity. 

Ammonia is one of the most important chemicals in modern society. 50 percent of the world's food production relies on it, and half the world's population would not be alive without ammonia. However, current ammonia production methods emit 500 Mt CO2 / year, eq. of two per cent of global CO2 emissions, which is on par with the entire aviation industry. The ammonia industry is under huge pressure to transition towards greener production methods.

In addition, Russia is today the world's largest exporter of ammonia, followed by China and the Middle East, which creates a demand for local and green ammonia production in today's geopolitical environment. 

This is where NitroVolt comes in.

The NitroVolt team is working towards a solution that will produce green ammonia directly at the point of use, at the farm. 

The product will be a container-sized system, combining only air, water, and renewable electricity. It totally removes fossil fuels from the production process, making its ammonia 100 per cent renewable, carbon-free, and competitive with current black ammonia prices on the market. 

Suzanne Zamany Andersen (CEO) and Mattia Saccoccio (CTO) officially spun out their technology from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in July 2023 after seeing consistent positive results in scaling their system, built upon 7 years of extensive research within the field of electrochemical ammonia synthesis. 

The original research project started at the DTU Department of Physics, where Zamany Andersen was hired as a PhD student in 2017. Together with the scientific team, he was involved in discovering the process.

Saccoccio joined the project as a Postdoc in 2019, with a focus on upscaling, and has engineered the flow system necessary for commercial application. 

Suzanne Zamany Andersen, CEO & Co-founder of NitroVolt, explained: 

"Our technology makes it possible to produce ammonia locally and lets the end user control the production. This means that the production becomes resilient to supply chain volatility and green simultaneously - something that doesn't exist on the market today."

Susanne Najafi, Founding Partner at BackingMinds, shared:

 "NitroVolt caught our attention as we've sought green fertiliser alternatives for over two years. Its groundbreaking solution targets 100 per cent renewable, carbon-free ammonia, addressing a critical concern in agriculture.

We seek companies like NitroVolt that tackle global challenges head-on, aligning perfectly with our mission for significant carbon emission reduction globally."

Lead image: Sara: ´CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED.