ElectrIfied ammoNia CrAcking iN sTructured reactors

In view of the ongoing energy transition, solutions for the transportation and storage of hydrogen are urgently needed.

Ammonia is recognized in principle as the best hydrogen carrier, but a bottleneck is represented by the lack of efficient industrial technologies for ammonia decomposition (cracking), a necessary step for hydrogen recovery.Capitalizing on the previous ERC projects of the PI (INTENT, AdG 2015; INSTANT, PoC 2020), INCANT proposes to develop an innovative reactor technology to valorise the potential of ammonia as energy vector via its cracking to hydrogen.

The novelty core of INCANT is an electrified catalytic reactor configuration, which features ohmic heating of highly porous cellular internals (e.g., open-cell foams, 3D printed POCS).

As demonstrated in the parent AdG ERC project INTENT for the case of another endothermic reaction, i.e. methane steam reforming, this solution provides a twofold advantage, in that: i) the high porosity can be packed with a large amount of catalyst particles, which is key to increase the conversion efficiency of the relatively slow NH3 cracking process; ii) the electrically and thermally connected cellular internals enable a very effective and uniform supply of the endothermic heat of reaction across the catalyst bed through the Joule effect (heat generation due to the passage of electric current in a conductor), with thermal efficiencies approaching 100%.

The goal of INCANT is to adapt and demonstrate the same concept for the ammonia cracking reaction, developing a prototype NH3 reformer which will revolutionize the technology associated with the use of ammonia as hydrogen carrier: it will in fact enable the ammonia decomposition in compact, intensified structured reactors, which is optimal for distributed applications.

If using electricity from renewable sources (wind, solar…), this concept results in releasing hydrogen with virtually no CO2 emissions.