Electrochemical synthesis produces urea from CO2 and nitrate, indicating promise for sustainable nitrogen removal.
Concerted electroreduction of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and nitrate (NO 3 − ) to produce urea is a “three‐win” path that simultaneously achieves the high‐value utilization of CO 2 , nitrogen removal from wastewater, and green nitrogen fertilizer production. It is becoming a new frontier in artificial carbon cycling and sustainable agriculture, while there are bottlenecks in catalyst stability, catalytic performance, and mechanism insights. As a result, the large‐scale implementation of this technology still faces significant challenges. By integrating the analysis of reaction mechanisms, the design of catalytic microstructure, and the optimization of external conditions, a multiscale correlation framework among the three is established in this concept , providing a key path to bridge the acknowledged gap between molecular‐scale mechanisms and macroscopic system optimization. The objective is to expedite the industrial application of this technique and promote the utilization of waste carbon and nitrogen sources in a circular manner.
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Pan et al. (2025) studied this question.
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