Objectives

ANDREAH’s main objective is to provide a quantum leap in the development of advanced ammonia decomposition technologies to produce ultra-pure hydrogen (>99.998%) by developing an innovative system based on a Catalytic Membrane Reactor (CMR) for the cracking of Ammonia. In this way, optimised heat management, improved conversion per pass and purification/recycling for more cost-efficient and resource-effective ammonia decomposition at lower temperatures compared to conventional systems will be achieved. This goal will be reached by:

• Designing and setting up a broad and complete network of value chains with world-class universities, research centres and industrial partners to develop the key building blocks for ammonia cracking

(See Figure below)

• Developing a set of flexible cost-effective and environmentally friendly technologies that can be easily tailored for the decomposition of ammonia into green H2 for different applications (Energy & Transport among others).
• Laying the foundations for new business opportunities related to the development of new catalysts and membranes integrated into membrane reactors to provide huge process intensification enabling the distributed generation of hydrogen from NH3 as long-term storage media.

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL TARGETS:

ANDREAH is divided in the following specific targets:

1.To develop and demonstrate at 10kgH2/day scale, a new Intensified ammonia cracking system based on Catalytic membrane Reactor Technology through advanced Carbon Molecular Sieve Membranes integrated with Novel Catalyst.

• To develop an innovative, environmentally friendly and with less critical materials, structured catalyst that can be used at much lower temperatures compared to state of the art process.

• To develop innovative membranes for selective separation of H2 during production process.
• To develop novel sorbents for polishing the H2 recovered by the membranes

2. To develop a full LCA, LCC and Health and Safety Analysis (HSE) of ANDREAH

3.To pave the way for future exploitation of ANDREAH Key Exploitable results

Project Structure and Plan:

ANDREAH will be clustered around 3 phases, which will allow the smooth and sound transition from current development stage of the technologies to a validation at TRL 5. As shown in Figure 8, the ANDREAH methodology comprises upstream R&D activities of the proposed technologies, followed by selection and development of the final prototype. Finally, the validation of the main selected technology will take place and the main KPIs for hydrogen production from NH3 will be analysed. Phase 1 – R&D (M1-M24): led by the universities, RTOs and industrial partners, this Phase will mainly focus the optimization of key building blocks (Membranes, catalysts, sorbents and Reactors). Most of the experiments during this phase will be performed at laboratory or small scale. The key components in this phase will be developed by TEC (membranes), CNR and UMI (Catalysts) and TUE (sorbents and reactors). The main research areas that will be explored within the R&D phase of ANDREAH as well as how we will go beyond the state of the art are explained in detail below, following the key components of the concept.
Moreover, this R&D phase will be organised into three different pillars: The first pillar will include modelling activities (by TUE) to guide R&D partners on the best combination of catalyst, sorbents, reactors and membranes to guide the experiments in an effective way. In the 2nd pillar, experiments with H2 and NH3 process that are well known for the R&D partners will be carried out first to validate the modelling. Gradually, R&D partners will move towards pillar 3 where they will perform experiments combining different components together as well as more complex streams based on the knowledge acquired in the first and second pillars. A Design of Experiment approach will be used to find the best combination of parameters and processing routes for the different key components. This will reduce drastically the number of experiments needed in order to find the optimal combination of key building blocks.
The final outcome of Phase 1 will be the selection of the key components for their scale up in Phase 2. However, R&D on lower TRL components will also be made within the project to obtain direct indications on alternative solutions (up to TRL4).

IN SHORT: