Powering Fertiliser with Sunlight: How EPSRC IAA Funding Helped Turn a Lab Idea into a Real-World Prototype
When Dr Tugce Ayvali first joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, she wasn’t imagining herself as a future entrepreneur. A chemist and materials scientist by training, her world revolved around nanomaterials, catalysts, and sustainable energy transformations.
Several years later, she found herself leading a project with the potential to change how small-scale farmers in some of the world’s most challenging environments access fertiliser - and, by extension, how they feed their communities.
This case study tells the story of how EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) funding helped turn a high-potential lab concept into a working prototype, forging new interdisciplinary and industry collaborations while laying the groundwork for multiple clean-tech ventures tackling global challenges.
At the heart of the story is a deceptively simple idea: What if farmers could make their own fertiliser, on-site, using only air, water, and sunlight?
Tugce AyvaliThe Researcher: A Chemist at the Energy-Agriculture Interface
Dr Tugce Ayvali was a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford’s Department of Chemistry. Her specialism is nanomaterials and sustainable chemical transformation.
During her eight years in Oxford’s Department of Chemistry, working within Professor Edman Tsang’s group, Dr Ayvali developed deep expertise in synthesising nanomaterials for clean energy applications, designing catalysts for sustainable chemical reactions, and working on ammonia and hydrogen as both energy carriers and chemical feedstocks.
Her work focused on how to generate energy from chemicals like hydrogen and ammonia, and how to store energy in these molecules in a way that is efficient and sustainable.
This strong scientific base positioned her perfectly when a new opportunity emerged to apply this knowledge to one of the most fundamental human needs: Food production.
The Challenge: Fertiliser, Fossil Fuels, and Smallholder Farmers
Ammonia is a key ingredient in nitrogen fertilisers, which underpin global agriculture. But commercial ammonia production is highly energy-intensive, dependent on hydrogen from fossil fuels (usually natural gas), a major source of CO₂ emissions, and economically vulnerable, with prices that fluctuate alongside oil and gas markets
For large industrialised farms, these costs and fluctuations are challenging but often manageable. However, for smallholder farmers they can be prohibitive, as they cannot reliably afford or access fertilisers.
Dr Ayvali and her colleagues sought to design and test a system that would allow small farms to generate their own fertiliser locally, in a way that is clean, affordable, and simple to operate.
The Idea: Solar-Driven Ammonia Production
The concept that emerged from the research group was elegant. The team used a photocatalytic material that absorbed sunlight, to combine nitrogen from air and hydrogen from water to produce ammonia, on-site, where it is needed.
The team envisaged a compact, easy-to-use unit, akin to a solar panel, a device that could be placed the field, water passed through it, to photcatalytically generate ammonia for use as fertiliser.
At the time, ammonia prices were particularly high, making the prospect of a decentralised, solar-powered alternative even more compelling. But turning this idea into reality required far more than a good concept and a strong publication record.
As Dr Ayvali explains: “We knew we needed to scale up from small lab experiments, and test our hardware and systems in real-world conditions, not just controlled lab experiments. We were already beginning to think in terms of customers, markets and business models. That’s where EPSRC IAA funding became critical.”
The IAA Project: From Catalyst to “Fish Tank” Prototype
Funding the First Leap
In around 2019, the team secured EPSRC IAA funding to begin translating their ammonia concept towards application. This support was designed precisely for this kind of work: bridging the gap between fundamental research and real-world use. The study was conducted in collaboration with Prof. Rene Bañares-Alcántara and Dr. Richard Nayak-Luke from Engineering Science Department.
The project unfolded in two broad phases: In the initial phase, IAA Funding helped Tugce develop the Lab Prototype, enabled scale up of the catalyst quantities, as well as the design, build and demonstration of performance of the first prototype in the laboratory. Subsequent, follow-on-funding supported the field demonstration of the technology under real world conditions.
A “Fish Tank” for Ammonia
The initial prototype design took on a memorable form. As Dr Ayvali describes it, the team built: “A kind of fish tank prototype” – a transparent, enclosed system where they could house the photocatalyst, control the flow of water, and expose everything to light.
Crucially, the IAA funding allowed them to carry out prototype design and engineering work, and assemble and test the system within the university environment. A pivotal element of the project was a partnership with Oxford Product Design, a local company specialising in turning ideas into manufacturable products.
With their support, the team was able to finalise the engineering design of the prototype, select appropriate materials to withstand environmental conditions, and integrate the catalyst into a complete working system.
The IAA funding enabled researchers to work with product designers providing the flexibility and resources to translate their research outputs into a functional device.
Field Trial in India: Testing the Vision on the Ground
Field testing the deviceDr Ayvali used follow-on IAA support to take the next, critical step to field test the device.
Why India?
India was a natural location for the first demonstration, since it has large numbers of smallholder farmers working on modest plots of land, and fertiliser costs can be a significant burden. There is also a strong interest in innovative, decentralised agricultural solutions.
The idea was to install a prototype unit that could, in principle, serve several farmers in a given area, giving them access to fertiliser produced on-site.
Delivering a Project in a Pandemic
The field trial took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, introducing additional complexity. Travel restrictions meant the Oxford team could not be on-site in person, so they partnered with an engineering company in India to purchase the necessary equipment locally, assemble the system based on designs from Oxford, and conduct testing and provide performance data.
The Oxford team shipped the catalyst to India, and the local partners ran the experiments on their behalf. Despite the difficulties, the collaboration demonstrated that the technology could be deployed beyond the lab, operated by external teams and evaluated in real-world agricultural conditions.
The Human Story: A Researcher Becomes an Entrepreneur
One of the most striking impacts of the project is what it did for Dr Ayvali herself. As she explains:
“When I first approached the idea of commercialisation, I had little knowledge of how to start a business, and had never written a business plan. I thought largely in terms of experiments and data, not customers and markets.”
The IAA project changed that.
Learning the Language of Business
Through developing the project, responding to funders, and engaging with potential partners, Dr Ayvali had to write a business plan that included growth projections and impact. She also had to justify why certain components or tasks should be outsourced or kept within the University via collaborations with other departments. The team began to consider how to (i) leverage internal expertise within the university, (ii) build stronger cross-departmental collaborations, and (iii) use IAA funding to make these collaborations possible. Through this process, Dr Ayvali gained a much more commercially aware mindset. This was also partially due to her having chosen to participate in RisingWISE, the EPSRC IAA-funded Oxbridge programme for women in STEM. As Dr Ayvali notes:
“Participating in RisingWISE broadened my perspective and sparked my imagination about future possibilities. The practical sessions on topics such as negotiation and leadership helped me to get clear on what I wanted and needed for future success.”
A New Career Trajectory
The experience also reshaped her career path. As the ammonia project evolved, another opportunity emerged: a startup company developing green hydrogen production from seawater using sunlight.
The new venture was closely aligned with her expertise and built on the same fundamental ideas of using advanced materials and sunlight to drive clean chemical processes, and replacing fossil fuel–based routes with more sustainable alternatives.
Today, Dr Ayvali serves as Head of Technology in this company, which is developing its first commercial prototype. The scientific lessons from the ammonia project, and the entrepreneurial and collaborative skills gained through the IAA-funded work, have fed directly into this role.
As she notes: “It’s the same principle with a different material. Whatever we develop here can be translated back to ammonia.”
Beyond One Project: Spin-Outs and a Growing Ecosystem
The ammonia project also contributed to a broader ecosystem of clean-tech innovation emerging from the group. These companies continue to build on technologies and ideas that trace back to the same core research on photocatalytic processes.
Why IAA Funding Matters: Reflections from the Front Line
Dr Ayvali reflected that the IAA enabled her to work across disciplinary boundaries to develop chemical technology, which required chemistry and materials science for catalysis and reactions, process engineering to design flows, pressures and conditions, mechanical engineering to build robust hardware, with systems integration and product design. The IAA funding allowed the team to bring together different disciplines within the University, to partner with external firms like Oxford Product Design, and to focus not just on “can we do this in principle?” but “can we make this work in practice?”
The First Real-World Prototype: A Critical Milestone
IAA support uniquely allowed the team to build, and demonstrate a working prototype. The IAA derisked the early technical development and testing of the prototype outside the laboratory environment.
According to Dr Ayvali, this is where schemes like the IAA are uniquely valuable: “Creating a first prototype in a real environment is best demonstrated in a university with collaborative work. This de-risks early technical development, and creates evidence that investors and partners can evaluate. From there, it’s much easier to get some traction and secure funding. Also, within a university setting, you have access to so many talented people. This is really essential.”
Looking Ahead: From Pilot Projects to Global Benefit
While the original ammonia project is still being refined, particularly with respect to improving reaction yields, its influence is already being felt. It has seeded commercial ventures in hydrogen and ammonia technologies, and it has trained researchers who now operate confidently at the research–industry interface. Crucially, it has also demonstrated that solar-driven fertiliser production is more than a theoretical idea. This is precisely the kind of transformational pathway that the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account was designed to unlock.