A 10% projected improvement in a bulk chemical process isn't that useful unless you're already in the industry. It's not enough to justify entering the industry. 2x, though...
The real company that this was based on probably projected beating the cost of the equivalent Haber-Bosch industrial setup but ultimately couldn’t reduce the nanoparticle production costs and pivoted to selling nanoparticles. I think the best “carbon free” ammonia is still 50% more expensive than the cheapest ammonia, but there seems to be continuous research into promising methods. I’m not a chemical engineer though, and do not know how to qualify research, but this recent article from a Stanford group was intriguing: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/04/ecofriendly-ammoni...
A similar area with a ton of interesting research is sustainable production of silicon where current smelting uses carbothermic reduction of silica in an arc furnace
Total world silicon production for ICs isn't that big. It's about 9 million metric tons / year. Steel production is around 2 billion metric tons / year.
A similar area with a ton of interesting research is sustainable production of silicon where current smelting uses carbothermic reduction of silica in an arc furnace