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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 ?

PHE has had similar SP performance to AFC, it’s only the last week things have started happening, if you jump now you risk buying at a high and possibly losing out here. But your choice…

In what way ? Please explain

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. 

Well you’re certainly more accurate than Haggis !

AFC are very good at spending money, but very poor at generating any !

He’s got to save any scraps of good news (if there is any) to release alongside the annual results to try to stop a bloodbath.

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.

Klunk, this is what I was referring to - from the same RNS

The H-Power Generators will be available for hire exclusively in the UK and Ireland from late this year through Speedy for an initial three-year period.

Order

Under the SMA, SHS commits to an initial order from AFC Energy, for delivery throughout the first six months of 2024, of generators at a committed value of £2m with the intention to increase orders up to c.£4.7m across the first full contract year (commencing 1 Nov. 2023). The delivery profile of generators above the committed value is subject to performance and market uptake consistent with the business plan.

We don’t even know if the H-Power Generators have been delivered to Speedy, if they had you would have expected AFC to have announced it on X and LinkedIn.

I have a feeling that AFC were unaware of the terms of the contract that all components had to be factory acceptance tested and the units as a whole before they would accept delivery hence AFC couldn’t just ship them existing units - that is purely a guess.

You can call me whatever you like Haggis but I’ve never advised anyone to buy, sell or hold, you on the other hand saying you think now is a great time to buy when everyone knows you’re history of wrong calls, ie the Mcap is being pegged at £500m. You’re so full of conspiracy theories, why can’t you just accept that Bond hasn’t delivered on his expectations ? It’ll be March soon and we still havent delivered anything to Speedy that should have been delivered last year.

The ABB contract was originally announced in Dec 2020 with delivery ‘expected’ mid 2021 so you can ‘expect’ all the news you like, doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.

Pipeline of 10 systems ? And what % chance of winning those as things currently stand ? 10% ? I wouldn’t even give that right now.

Can you see some similarities ? First mover advantage, positive market feedback, assemble fuel cells in Thailand, The MOU will quickly establish a business model to monetise the growing waste stream, create a platform for developing similar projects .

Replace Thailand with Germany, replace AlterNRG with TAMGO…nothing has changed in 10 years.

Let’s have a bit of fun then and see what big news we had 10 years ago when the SP was about to rocket.

24 February 2014

AFC Energy plc

( "AFC Energy")

New drive to accelerate launch of energy-from-waste projects in Thailand

AFC Energy plc, a leading British industrial fuel cell power company, is pleased to announce that it has signed a new co-operation agreement in Bangkok to accelerate the adoption of its fuel cell systems in proposed energy-from-waste (EfW) projects in Thailand.

The agreement, comprising a Memorandum of Understanding, was signed late last week between AFC Energy, Waste2Tricity International (Thailand) Ltd, and Alter NRG Corporation (collectively "the Participants") at the St Regis Hotel in Bangkok. The ceremony was held in the presence of His Excellency, Mark Kent, the UK ambassador, together with senior executives from the Thai banking, waste and real estate sectors.

The MOU builds on the commercialisation deal announced on 31 October 2013 granting exclusive rights to Waste2Tricity International (Thailand) Ltd to use AFC Energy's low-cost fuel cell systems to generate renewable power from hydrogen gasified from municipal solid waste.

Following positive market feedback, the Participants have expanded their cooperation to advance a number of large scale EfW projects in Thailand. In addition, the Participants will investigate ways to assemble fuel cells in Thailand, reduce the timeline of fuel cells being integrated into waste plants and lobby the Thai government for fuel cell incentives.

Waste2Tricity International (Thailand) Ltd is a majority owned subsidiary of Waste2Tricity Ltd, a UK based developer of EfW projects in which AFC Energy owns 23% equity. Alter NRG, based in Canada, is a leading waste gasification technology company.

Ian Williamson, Chief Executive Officer AFC Energy, said: "We are delighted to continue our close relationship with Waste2Tricity and to be working closely with Alter NRG. Everyone believes there is a considerable opportunity for large scale waste to energy projects in Thailand as these will not only increase energy independence from renewable sources but will also alleviate pressure on landfill to deal with waste. Working together we can benefit from first mover advantage and open up this market quickly and demonstrate a compelling investment case for such fuel cell-based power systems."

PK Thummukgool, Director of Waste2tricity and Project Director for the Thailand project, said: "This agreement clearly demonstrates Waste2Tricity's intentions to shorten the time to market for our energy-from-waste systems incorporating AFC's low cost fuel cells. The MOU will quickly establish a business model to monetise the growing waste stream in Thailand and also create a platform for developing similar projects in the ASEAN region."

That’s good, it removed investmentpro’s blatant ramp saying big news due very soon.

It’s not actually clear from the interview which product the stacks are for, it just mentions they have FAT 12 fuel cell stacks. They could be for 3 power towers since they have never been FAT for Speedy. It’s an assumption that they are for the 30kW system without further information.

Great summary Git. If anything, all the recent interview gave us was that there are yet more delays, how the happy club have tried to claim the interview was positive is beyond me.

Must be very hectic for Afc at the moment dealing with.

Speedy hire orders. - 1 order, first units were expected to be delivered in 2023, some of the components have been FAT tested, Bond was very careful not to say all components have now been FAT tested.

Acciona orders. - 1 order for a trial, unit can be returned at the end of the trial, probably has as this is old news.

ABB 200kw orders. 1 order, delayed, manufacturing should have been completed in 2023.

Setting up mass manufacturing & Outsourcing both here & with Tamgo in Saudi Arabia & that region.

Work ongoing to modulerise the Hydrogen cracker tech.

They must be rushed off their feet, not to mention other companies intrested in buying & leasing the fuel cells & cracker tech.

Very busy time for Afc.