Plate Heat Exchanger based Ammonia Fed CATalytic Hydrogen GENerator for Carbon-free Power Generation
Project period: 2018-2019
Grant: DKK 1,6 mio.
The project is a collaboration between RenCat, DTU Physics and Alfa Laval Sweden. The project is funded under EUROSTARS program. The objective of the project is to develop a novel high temperature reactor technology by coating diffusion bonded plate heat exchangers with proprietary catalysts for a robust ammonia to hydrogen generation reactor and scale up
the production through a pilot plant for faster market introduction. The hydrogen generator will be a key aspect of
RenCat’s scale up to €5.7 B and 12.2% CAGR mobile telephone tower base and backup power market based on its patented low cost ammonia to hydrogen generation technology.
We want to do it because the developed reactor will reduce startup time, give higher performance and reduce cost
because of the use of industrially produced heat exchangers from Alfa Laval. The improved product with lower cost
will be the key step for market scaling up of Rencat power generators. A high performance and robust system will
facilitate the growth of the use of ammonia which has six times higher effective energy density than hydrogen
stored in cylinders, as fuel.
The specific contribution of DTU Physics in the project is coming from one of its core areas namely catalysis and surface science (Section SurfCat). The research will focus on developing a novel catalyst for ammonia cracking which can lower the reaction temperature by ~200℃ compared to the state of the art ammonia cracking catalysts available.
