The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
My notes from the video:
AB said AFC could manufacture 1 to 200 units, then said 150 to 250, ie he doesn’t know !
AB said they can’t afford to target too many applications and need to focus - but are still targeting construction, maritime, rail, data centres.
AB said he expected orders to grow next year and possibly even this year - we’re only in Feb ffs !
No new news, only really confirmed that everything is happening at a snails pace.
The only good news is that we should finally be making a delivery to Speedy soon but gave no indication of how many systems would be shipped.
All every genuine investor wants to hear about is when will the 30kw and 200kw units be available for sale, how many have been built and sold, what mix of units are Speedy getting and when, it’s really not that difficult to provide this information and instead we get some vague pointless new product that will take years to bring to market.
How many systems have we got on the shelves ready to ship ? How many can we manufacture in what time ?
Although the website says they are coming soon do we have forward orders that we can fulfil as soon as they are signed off, these are all really basic questions that after all the years of promises we still don’t have answers to.
Not at all CN just pointing out this will be a very crowded market, if you think little old AFC can beat Aramco good luck to you, personally I take anything Bond says with a pinch of salt until he sells something.
Saudi Aramco and Linde Engineering to Develop Ammonia Cracking Technology
Trade News
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Pullach, Germany, March 15, 2023 – Aramco, one of the world’s leading integrated energy and chemicals companies, and Linde Engineering, a global leader in the production and processing of gases, announced that they have signed an agreement to jointly develop a new ammonia cracking technology. The collaboration between the two companies will combine Linde Engineering and Aramco’s experience and capabilities in industrial research and development, lower-carbon hydrogen, and ammonia cracking technology.
A potential differentiator of this new technology is the ammonia cracking catalyst, jointly developed by Aramco and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), which will be evaluated against other catalysts.
Through this agreement, Aramco and Linde Engineering plan to build a demonstration plant in northern Germany to showcase this new ammonia cracking technology. Linde Engineering intends to offer this ammonia cracking technology to current and new customers, creating new commercial opportunities within the global lower-carbon energy supply chain. The emerging lower-carbon ammonia business may prove to be key in bridging the gap between a country’s domestic renewable energy production capacity and total energy demand.
Ahmad Al-Khowaiter, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Aramco, said: “This agreement is part of our ongoing technology and business development efforts to establish a commercially viable lower-carbon hydrogen supply chain. We believe the advanced ammonia cracking technology we are co-developing with Linde Engineering will play a key role in realizing our objectives.”
John van der Velden, Senior Vice President Global Sales & Technology at Linde Engineering, said: “Effective ammonia cracking technology supports the world’s urgent need for decarbonization. By completing the missing link in the export chain, cleaner energy can be shipped from regions with high renewable and clean energy potential to those with more limited resources. We look forward to working closely with Aramco to develop and commercialize this important technology, creating new business opportunities for Linde Engineering and Aramco.”
Air Liquide announces the construction of an industrial scale ammonia (NH3) cracking pilot plant in the port of Antwerp, Belgium. When transformed into ammonia, hydrogen can be easily transported over long distances. Using innovative technology, this plant will make it possible to convert, with an optimized carbon footprint, ammonia into hydrogen (H2). With this cracking technology, Air Liquide will further contribute to the development of hydrogen as a key enabler of the energy transition.
Ammonia - a molecule made of hydrogen and nitrogen - can be used as an energy carrier. It can be produced with a low-carbon footprint from hydrogen in geographies with abundant renewable energy sources such as sun, water and wind, or other low-carbon power. A global supply chain infrastructure is already in place for its production, transportation and utilization at large scale to serve various industries. This allows regions with abundant renewable energy to export ammonia to end users across the globe, where it can be converted back to hydrogen to contribute to the decarbonization of industry and mobility.
The innovative pilot plant, which combines a novel efficient process with Air Liquide’s proprietary technologies, is planned to be operational in 2024. The Flemish Government, through the VLAIO (Flemish Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), has confirmed a financial support to the project.
For over 60 years, Air Liquide has mastered hydrogen from production, transport, storage and distribution to its final usages. Within the context of its ADVANCE strategic plan, the Group is committed to investing globally approximately 8 billion euros in the low-carbon hydrogen value chain by 2035.
Foundations laid for £6.7m world-leading hydrogen 'cracking' site
Consortium gathers for construction milestone on ammonia 'cracking' site
Sarah Walker
23 May 2023
Topics
Hydrogen power
Net Zero
In association with
Temple Group
The foundations have been laid at a first-of-a-kind green ammonia to hydrogen demonstrator site at Tyseley Energy Park in Birmingham.
The £6.7m project has been developed by the Ammogen Consortium, a multi-disciplinary and multi-national team dedicated to driving forward hydrogen fuel supply chains in the UK and worldwide.
The consortium is actively pursuing opportunities for investment in order to roll out further sites in the UK.
Consortium partners gathered at Tyseley Energy Park (TEP) to mark the construction milestone for the facility which, once commissioned, will deliver 200kg per day of transport-grade hydrogen to the hydrogen refuelling station at TEP.
Funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the project is expected to be the world’s largest and most efficient ammonia to hydrogen conversion unit of its kind.
The facility will use technology developed by H2SITE that derives hydrogen from ammonia through a process called cracking.
Cracking uses a high temperature furnace to separate ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen, after which the hydrogen is filtered and purified for use as fuel.
Project partners Gemserv, Equans, H2Site, Tyseley Energy Park, Yara and the University of Birmingham, estimate that over 97,000 jobs and £16bn GVA could be delivered in the UK through early investment in cracking technologies that enable the use of ammonia as a hydrogen carrier.
Alex Goody, chief executive of consortium lead Gemserv said: "Hydrogen is a crucial energy vector in the mission to net zero, and a major market challenge in the ability to transport hydrogen to where it's needed.
"Ammonia could be that carrier to unlock green hydrogen and production globally.
"Gemserv is pleased to be working with our market leading consortium partners and Government in this project and hope to add to both the local community in Birmingham and our nation's drive to net zero."
James Graham, divisional CEO for EQUANS UK & Ireland, said: “The laying of the foundations marks an important step as we move into the construction phase of this project.
"It is also symbolic as this innovative project is laying the foundations for the wider hydrogen economy and the path towards a Green Industrial Revolution.
"We look forward to continue working with our partners to deliver a truly revolutionary step in the path to net zero carbon."
Professor Martin Freer, director of the University of Birmingham’s Energy Institute said: “It has been a pleasure to celebrate this construction milestone today and we look forward to completing the commission of this world-leading facility later this year.”
Successful validation, orders now available
Syzygy’s light-powered reactor technology during testing at its Houston laboratories. Source: Syzygy Plasmonics.
Click to learn more. Syzygy’s light-powered reactor technology during testing at its Houston laboratories. Source: Syzygy Plasmonics.
US-based Syzygy Plasmonics has announced successful final tests of its Rigel™ cell reactor technology. More than 1,500 hours of testing have validated the production of hydrogen from ammonia in the reactor, which can be stacked to produce up to 5 tons of hydrogen per day. In 2025, Syzygy anticipates they can increase this installed capacity to 10 tons per day, followed by 100 tons per day in 2026.
Testing indicates the electricity input required will be 12 kWh/kg hydrogen produced in 2025, and then improved to 10 kWh/kg in 2026. Syzygy’s process avoids the combustion requirement of conventional ammonia cracking technology, meaning no NOx molecules are produced, and allowing for the process to be completely powered by renewable electricity.
Appearing at Ammonia Energy’s 2021 annual conference, Syzygy presented benchtop results indicating that their under-development reactor could operate at an energy intensity of 23 kWh/kg hydrogen produced, with a capacity of about 5 kg hydrogen production per day in a single-pass design. The new announcement demonstrates significant progress on that design – and that Syzygy is well on the path to reaching its 10 kWh/kg energy consumption goal. In late 2022, Syzygy and LOTTE Chemical announced they would deploy the technology at LOTTE’s Ulsan manufacturing headquarters.
Ammonia can also be used for supplying hydrogen to land vehicles. It can be converted into hydrogen right at the filling station using decentralized plants. This eliminates the need to transport compressed and liquefied hydrogen — a costly and complex process. To this end, Fraunhofer IMM is developing a cracking reactor based on innovative catalyst technology and microstructured reactor technology. In this reactor, pure hydrogen is produced from ammonia through cracking and subsequent purification, which is then injected into PEM fuel cells. Hydrogen for use in fuel cell vehicles can therefore be produced sustainably from ammonia right at the filling station.
“By utilizing the off-gas of the pressure swing adsorption (PSA applied for hydrogen purification) as energy source for the cracking process, we are able to achieve an efficiency of 90 percent in comparison to 70 percent which are achieved when conventional technologies are applied. Additionally, our AMMONPAKTOR reactor is much more compact than conventional reactors, meaning that we have achieved a 90 percent size reduction. This is particularly important for mobile and space-constrained applications. Finally, our technology has a lower carbon footprint in comparison to electrically heated reactor concepts because we use the exhaust gases from the cracking process to generate the energy required and no other sources,” explains Kolb.
The AMMONPAKTOR reactor from Fraunhofer IMM, which was financed by the State of Rhineland-Palatinate using ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) funds, is also the most efficient reactor on an international scale. Even in its first generation, the cracking reactor achieved the second-highest specific hydrogen production rate ever published owing to the unique technology of Fraunhofer IMM. The second-generation cracking reactor, which is currently in the manufacturing process and has a throughput of 25 kg/hour of ammonia, produces 70 kilos of purified hydrogen per day. It will be exhibited at the Hannover Messe 2023.
We’ve got a world leading ‘x’ all we have to do now is scale it up. Commercial samples going out to customers. Has Bond just copy and pasted the Alkamem RNS and replaced Alkamem with cracker ?
Seriously why would you say this in an article when you’re trying to sell hydrogen fuel cells ? How do you counter the argument with potential customers that hydrogen is difficult to store and transport when you’re saying it yourself ???
n theory, extraction would be a means to produce hydrogen at low cost, low footprint, low water and low energy consumption, and is attracting growing investor interest. But as early exploratory wells are still a long way off commercial production, significant questions remain as to whether this is a viable, scalable future energy source.
For example, hydrogen is difficult to store and transport in gas form. But it could be produced and converted to a carrier fuel – such as ammonia – and then 'cracked' back to hydrogen at the point of use in much the same way as LNG is liquified for export and re-gassified at the destination port.
We’ve been in bed with Altaaqa for nearly 3 years now, Tamgo are the parent company, if this relationship isn’t mature enough for AFC to be able to supply volume orders as soon as the systems are available to buy it is a very sad reflection on the senior management. An MOU was signed with Altaaqa in April 2021.