Nitrogen- and potassium-based technologies boosting the energy transition

The global energy and environmental context clearly highlights the need for new technologies capable of guaranteeing the conversion of renewable sources and the storage of the produced energy in a sustainable, safe and geographically balanced way. (Electro)chemical technologies and materials science are the basis of many of these strategies, and international decision-makers, being aware of them, have begun to promote suitable funding initiatives. In this contribution, three emerging scenarios currently under investigation at the Electrochemistry Group @PoliTO are presented. First, Li-N2 cells are proposed as a solution for the electrochemical N2 reduction reaction (E-NRR), leading to the irreversible Li3N formation and subsequent protonation into NH3. This represents a sustainable and renewable energy-powered process to replace the Haber-Bosch one and making NH3 as a viable green energy carrier, being easier transportable and safer than H2. Second, potassium batteries are presented as a viable alternative to Li-based ones for both stationary energy storage and E-NRR applications. They exploit potassium abundance, negative redox potential and weak Lewis acidity, leading to a truly promising technology to boost the energy transitions. Low-cost and/or biosourced cell components will be presented in the contribution. Third, our attempt to pushing these technologies towards higher TRLs in our laboratory will be presented, from both the fabrication and characterization aspects.