Greatest invention of the 20th century ripe for makeover: NitroVolt produces fertiliser decentrally and climate-friendly

This post is also available in: Danish

Half of the world’s population would starve if we hadn’t invented commercial nitrogen-based fertiliser production. This is therefore hailed as one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. But it’s also a climate challenge: 1.5% of the world’s CO2 emissions stems from nitrogen-based fertiliser production alone.

In other words, there is huge potential – and business opportunities – in reinventing the more than 100-year-old method to produce fertiliser in a climate-friendly way. And that’s exactly what Danish startup NitroVolt is currently trying to do.

“We are based on a research project on DTU Physics from the past 6,5 years. Professor Ib Chorkendorff had the original idea over 20 years ago. I got hired as a PhD student in 2017, and in 2018 we finally found a method that worked,” tells Suzanne Zamany Andersen, CEO and co-founder of the spinout NitroVolt, which is based on the research.

The company is working to develop and commercialise the new method, which uses electricity as the driving force in production along with water and air. This means the method can use green energy to decarbonise fertilizer production.

“You can make this technology produce fertilizer at a small scale: a container-sized solution. Thereby, we can have nitrogen-based fertilizer generation at each farm, instead of in the big central facilities where it then has to be transported out to the farmer, sometimes halfway across the world,” explains Andersen.

The invention is a new method that produces carbon-neutral fertiliser with green power in a decentralised way. This will ultimately make the agricultural sector more resilient to external factors, such as wars and pandemic, which have recently caused massive issues for the supply chain of fertilizers: In 2022 farmers had to pay a 300-400% premium to buy their fertilizer, meaning many farmers simply could not afford what they needed.

Hence, the potential of the invention is huge, as it promises to make farming self-sufficient and sustainable. But it requires further development and massive funding to succeed.

From researcher to CEO

Academia claims a lot of novel yet un-verifiable ways of creating ammonia. Andersen tried to reproduce other researcher’s work during her first year as a Ph.D. – without success. Not until she and her team found a method originally discovered by scientists in Japan in the 90’s.

“We found a different process – which has now led to three patents – and published it in Nature in 2019. Once we had something that worked, the professors involved were able to apply for more funding, which grew the research team to 12 people working full-time. And we had so many breakthroughs – almost weekly,” says Andersen.

Up until 2021, it was very much a university research project. They developed and upscaled the technology to make it commercially relevant. And in parallel with the research, Suzanne knew she wanted to start the company.

She asked her colleague, Dr. Mattia Saccoccio to join her on the startup journey, and together they took a business course at Stanford University. During this course, they started to understand the market, the current supply chain, and they began getting interest from potential customers. They started raising funding by first applying for a Discovery Grant at DTU, then the Spin-outs Denmark Masterclass programme. They joined the national VPX acceleratorAn accelerator is an intensive program that provides startups with mentorship, education, resources, and sometimes funding to accelerate their growth. More program, at the Department of Physics at DTU, and have since then also gotten funding from an American foundation.

“As an engineer, you easily get stuck just wanting to build the best tech, thinking that once it’s done, everybody will want it. That’s not true. You have to develop tech for the market. Initially, I knew nothing about fertilizers, but now we understand the pain points and the processes. Our pitch used to be 90 per cent science. Now it’s 10 per cent science – the rest is business,” says Andersen.

The journey from initial research to a promising startup has been wild, and so has the transition from PhD student to CEO and co-founder of a spinout.

“Honestly, I’m doing so many different tasks. PR, webmaster, fundraising, managing the team – I have to do the CEO role, market analysis, customer outreach, investor outreach, and everything in-between. It’s a change in mindset. I enjoy being in the lab, but that’s not what’s necessary to push the project right now,” she says.

Huge input – huge output

NitroVolt is looking to turn air, water and green electricity into fertilizer to offer a fast implementation of a sustainable way to generate ammonia decentrally at scale.

The recipe and selling point are rather simple, but it takes a complicated chemical process that uses electricity to drive the two inputs to react and form ammonia. And there is still a lot of development and demonstrations needed before it’s ready for the market.

“Upscaling is primarily a technological challenge. Next summer, our goal is to have a pilot unit producing 1 kg per day. Then we need to fundraise to get to a demonstration unit at a farm generating 50 kg per day,” Andersen says, adding that the average Danish farmer needs 150 kg per day.

They plan to start leasing the units in four years, and in 2029, they hope to be profitable via sale of units. After 6.5 years of research, the timeline is still rather long compared to other startups. However, their potential impact is also far greater than your average startup.

“We can make fertilizer carbon neutral and expand the global market. Current production facilities are billion-dollar investments. We are aiming for decentralized production at each farm, which will allow parts of the world to access fertilizer which isn’t available today. The aim is both climate and humanitarian impact,” says Andersen.

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Alumni from Spin-outs Denmark

• NitroVolt participated in the first batch of upcoming spinouts in the Spin-outs Denmark programme. A programme that funds young researchers-turned-entrepreneurs, develops their entrepreneurship skills and supports the development of the invention and spinout with mentoring from experienced entrepreneurs as well as business developers from Danish universities.
• NitroVolt already had a well-developed business plan thanks to a previous course at Stanford University. However, the networking opportunity and connection to an industry network has been very valuable, says Suzanne Zamany Andersen, CEO and co-founder of NitroVolt: “If you only talk with other engineering startups from DTU, it’s a bubble. You need to get out. The Spin-outs Denmark master class, held at Aarhus University, has been very useful to us – especially in terms of connections. DTU Skylab is also amazing, but why not talk with startups at a national and international scale?”

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