Ammonia underpins global food production, yet virtually every kilogram of it travels through geopolitically exposed shipping lanes before reaching a farm. NitroFix, a Petah Tikva-based startup founded on nearly a decade of research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, has built the world's only single-step green ammonia generator, allowing farms and industries to produce their own supply on-site, from air and water, with no Haber-Bosch infrastructure and no exposure to disrupted supply chains.
The disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant share of global petrochemical and fertilizer trade flows, has renewed attention on a vulnerability that the agricultural world has known about for years but rarely addressed with urgency: the dependence of global food production on centralized ammonia supply chains that are exposed to geopolitical risk at nearly every link. Ammonia is not an industrial commodity at the margins of modern agriculture. It is the molecule that makes modern agriculture possible. Without a stable supply of ammonia-based fertilizers, global crop yields fall. Without stable crop yields, food security deteriorates fastest among the most vulnerable populations.
The process that has supplied that ammonia for more than a century is the Haber-Bosch method, developed in the early 1900s and largely unchanged since. It is one of the most consequential chemical processes in human history, and one of the most energy-intensive: it requires temperatures of around 400 degrees Celsius and pressures of approximately 300 atmospheres to fuse nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia, consuming vast quantities of fossil fuels in the process. Traditional ammonia production accounts for roughly 2 percent of global CO2 emissions annually, generating approximately 450 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. The facilities required to operate at these conditions are massive, expensive, and located far from the farms that need the output, which means the ammonia travels, through shipping lanes, ports, and distribution infrastructure, before it ever reaches a field. NitroFix was founded specifically to make that entire chain unnecessary.
Nearly a decade at the Weizmann Institute
The technology behind NitroFix's generators emerged from nearly a decade of research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, one of the world's leading multidisciplinary research institutions. Prof. Ronny Neumann, the inventor of the core catalytic technology, developed a breakthrough that mimics the catalytic capacity of nitrogenase enzymes found in nitrogen-fixing bacteria: organisms that have been performing ambient-condition nitrogen fixation for billions of years without the need for extreme heat or pressure. The NitroFix process uses an electrochemical cell with a proprietary organo-metallic catalyst embedded in custom-manufactured cathodes that do not require precious metals. The result is a single-step reaction that converts nitrogen from the air and ordinary water into ammonia at ambient conditions, using renewable electricity as the energy input, without the carbon emission, a truly green solution.
"Haber and Bosch propelled humanity forward in the last century. We're doing it for the next one." -- Ophira Melamed, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder, NitroFix
The significance of the green single-step architecture is sustainable, technical, and economic simultaneously. Conventional green ammonia production, even when powered by renewables, still requires a two-step process: first producing green hydrogen through electrolysis, then combining that hydrogen with nitrogen at high temperatures and pressures in a modified Haber-Bosch reactor. That two-step chain means high capital expenditure for the electrolysis equipment, energy losses at each conversion step, and the logistical complexity of handling hydrogen, which is flammable, difficult to store, and expensive to transport. NitroFix's process eliminates hydrogen entirely. Its proprietary catalyst achieves 20 percent lower energy consumption than Haber-Bosch methods and converts nitrogen and water directly into ammonia in a single electrochemical step, with oxygen as the only byproduct.
Decentralization as the strategic answer
The commercial architecture that NitroFix is building around that technology is the part most directly relevant to the food security crisis that events in the Strait of Hormuz have brought into focus. Rather than building large centralized production facilities that replicate the geographic concentration problem of existing ammonia infrastructure, NitroFix designs its generators to be modular, scalable, and deployable at the point of use. A farm in Israel, a cooperative in sub-Saharan Africa, or an agricultural operation in Southeast Asia can install a NitroFix generator, connect it to a renewable energy source, and produce green ammonia on-site, on demand, without dependence on any shipping route, any import terminal, or any legacy distribution infrastructure. The generator requires only air, water, and electricity. It produces ammonia continuously. And because it operates at ambient conditions rather than at extreme temperatures and pressures, it can be operated safely without the specialized workforce that industrial-scale chemical plants require.
The geopolitical dimension of that architecture is not incidental. Israel itself is acutely aware of supply chain vulnerability as a strategic risk. The events that disrupted Hormuz-dependent trade routes are a reminder that food security is not separable from energy security or from the stability of maritime chokepoints that were never designed with agricultural resilience in mind. A country, a region, or a farm that produces its own ammonia is insulated from disruptions that would otherwise translate directly into fertilizer shortages, rising input costs, and declining yields. That insulation is not merely an environmental benefit or a cost-reduction measure, though NitroFix's technology delivers both. It is a form of strategic resilience that the events of recent months have made newly urgent.
Recognition and the road ahead
The technology has attracted significant external validation. NitroFix was selected as a 2025 BloombergNEF Pioneers Wildcard Finalist for its novel ammonia synthesis technology, was named a Top 10 Innovator in Low-Carbon Fuels by Darcy Partners, and operates from Petah Tikva, Israel, where CEO and Co-Founder Ophira Melamed and her team are advancing the generator toward commercial deployment.
NitroFix has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with a Norwegian farmer’s association to pilot its ammonia generators, enabling farmers to produce on-site fertilizer directly from air and water. The collaboration will validate the system under real farming conditions and demonstrate a decentralized model for resilient, local ammonia supply.
Ammonia demand is projected to triple by 2050 as populations grow and the hydrogen economy matures, with green ammonia emerging as one of the leading candidates for zero-carbon maritime fuel alongside its agricultural applications. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has compressed the window between viable technology and urgent commercial deployment considerably. For a startup building decentralized green ammonia infrastructure from air and water, the moment could not be more relevant.
Ammonia made modern agriculture possible; decentralized ammonia may determine whether it remains resilient in an increasingly unstable world.
More at nitro-fix.com.
NitroFix is a Petah Tikva-based deep tech company developing modular, single-step green ammonia generators for on-site production. Founded on technology developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science. More information at nitro-fix.com
This article was written in cooperation with Tom White