Direct Ammonia Fuel Cell29 Mar 2025 21:43
Https://jae.cardiffuniversitypress.org/articles/10.18573/jae.33
Note that this is indirect
Interesting read! But this stuff is still in the laboratory and literally years away from even 10kW units - this article speaks about a 100W cell and questions around even 10x that at 1kw to 10kW:
"The performance mapping of the fuel cell, that is the sweeping of fuel rates at differing air-fuel ratios, revealed a system efficiency of 14%. Upon diagnosis, this was due to low fuel utilisation of the off-the-shelf SOFC at its intended operating condition, which the supplier’s anode reduction process is likely to have caused. This illustrated that the commercial availability of reliable SOFC stacks can be an obstacle to research in this field. However, an effective design was delivered that has practically demonstrated the use of waste heat and unconverted fuel to pre-crack for high temperature SOFCs (autothermal cracking without power input for heating), thus a direct ammonia to power system that avoids the need for upstream purification steps was delivered. Questions remain around the precise composition of its exhaust, and suggestions for a follow up prototype are to remove the vacuum vessel and scale-up the power rating of the system to the 1-10kW scale."
Give it time, sure, but seriously, not a competitor. And of course it's the end game for all of us to have a better energy source - perhaps AFC is already involved in this sort of research. Hope so.