First, farmers heavily depend on ammonia containing fertilizer to improve crop yield and
profitability. However, ammonia production is challenged by huge energy demand, release of
2% of global CO2 and political instability. A 25% nitrogen fertilizer produced by Russia is
currently off market due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and Russia has reduced gas supply
to Europe that further caused 60% reduction of nitrogen fertilizer production. Second, soybean
oil is used as the major feedstock for biodiesel and will increase with biodiesel production
upsurge in the United State. As a bioproduct of soybean oil production, soybean meal will
become abundant calling for the development of alternative use technologies for value added
products like biological ammonia (biofertilizer). We have developed a low energy process for
conversion of soybean meals to biological ammonia. The current research aims to upscale and
improve the process via stepwise or hybrid processing methods (bioconversion and
bioaugmentation). The bioconversion scale-up of our existing technology will focus on using
microbes to convert soybean meal to biological ammonia while the bioaugmentation will focus
on using different microbes to sequester air nitrogen to biological ammonia. We will use
synthetic biology techniques to bioengineer the microbes to enhance their nitrogen fixation
efficiencies and ability to use soybean meal as their food. The research outcomes will be a
sustainable processing technology (including process flow and conditions) that will add value
to soybean meal for biofertilizer production in form of biological ammonia.