A Siemens Energy-led consortium has begun work in Newcastle, UK on a new £3.5 million (US$4.24 million) ammonia cracker prototype designed to produce green hydrogen at industrial scale. The prototype will use ammonia to deliver 200kg of hydrogen a day—enough to power around 5-10 hydrogen fuel cell-electric buses.
The ammonia cracker system will provide the potential to produce green hydrogen at scale, wherever and whenever it is needed. The system will be designed to deliver high-purity hydrogen, suitable for PEM fuel cell use, using FFI’s Metal Membrane Technology (MMT) purification process.
The MMT process developed by FFI and Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) is key to producing high-purity hydrogen from the ammonia cracking process. It selectively filters the hydrogen while blocking other gases, allowing it to be used as a fuel and converted as needed, at the time of re-fueling.