TRaCE has invested $150,000 in UNSW Sydney spin-out OzAmmonia, whose patented electrolyser captures waste nitrogen- and carbon-based gases from heavy industry and converts them to value-added fuels and fertilisers using renewable electricity.
These gases include nitrogen oxides (NOx), which form when fuels burn at high temperatures in power stations, industrial plants and engines. They contribute to smog, acid rain and respiratory illness, and regulators are steadily lowering how much industry can release, whilst carbon dioxide (CO2) is a primary contributor to climate change.
The investment, made through TRaCE’s Early-Stage Seed Fund, forms part of OzAmmonia’s pre-seed round alongside the UNSW NSi Pre-seed Fund, Impact Ventures and other investors. The funding will help OzAmmonia enter a global emissions abatement market that is growing as emission limits tighten.
Turning a pollutant into a product
Today, most industrial NOx is treated with a process called selective catalytic reduction. It runs at high temperatures and needs a constant supply of ammonia or urea, which adds ongoing cost and is currently produced via fossil fuels.
OzAmmonia’s electrolyser uses electricity to convert captured CO2 and NOx into fertilisers such as ammonia and urea, and fuels such as methane and syngas, CO2 to fuels, and both.
The team has scaled it to a 1 kW demonstration system to be demonstrated on-site in 2027.
Founded in 2025, OzAmmonia is led by UNSW alumni Scientia A/Prof Rahman Daiyan, Dr Josh Leverett, and Dr Zhipeng Ma, with Scientia Professor Rose Amal as technical advisor. Together, they bring decades of research expertise in electrochemistry, electrocatalysis and technology scale-up.
“We set out to make renewable ammonia from air, but industry showed us a bigger opportunity with the emissions they were already paying to treat,” said Dr Josh Leverett, CEO of OzAmmonia. “Our technology turns that cost into a product. With emission regulations tightening and with renewable hydrogen and ammonia fuels on the rise, now is the time to bring it to market.”
Taking the technology to market
OzAmmonia has done the groundwork to show there is real demand for its technology. It has since built a prototype system, with demonstration trials planned in Australia, China and India in 2027.
This pre-seed investment gives OzAmmonia the runway to build on that momentum, turning pilots into commercial agreements and setting the company up for its next raise.
It also builds on a long relationship with TRaCE. The founders first connected with TRaCE through the UNSW Founders Engineer Spinout Fellowship, then took part in the UNSW Founders PreX program, a TRaCE-supported pre-accelerator for early-stage startups. More recently, the team was awarded a TRaCE R&D Voucher to develop more durable catalysts for splitting liquid ammonia.
“Industry has told us clearly that waste gas treatment is a cost they want to bring down, especially as they move to cleaner fuels,” said Dr Rahman Daiyan, co-founder of OzAmmonia. “TRaCE has backed us from our early research through to this raise. This investment helps us turn our pilots into long-term partnerships and show what our technology can do at commercial scale.”
________________
About the TRaCE Early-Stage Seed Fund
TRaCE’s Early-Stage Seed Fund is the first-of-its-kind fund at an Australian university, designed to close the investment gap that stops promising clean tech from moving out of the lab and into the market.
