Air Liquide’s Antwerp cracker begins operations
By on November 23, 2025
New facility at Port of Antwerp-Bruges unlocks key element of supply chain
Click to learn more. Air Liquide announced that its ammonia cracking pilot facility at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges has produced its first molecules. Source: Air Liquide.
Air Liquide has announced the successful start-up of its first industrial-scale ammonia cracking pilot unit at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges in Belgium. The “30 tons per day ammonia to hydrogen conversion capacity” unit has been in development since late 2023, and paves the way towards unlocking a key element of the hydrogen supply chain: converting bulk ammonia imports into high-purity hydrogen for pipeline transport and/or industrial use.
The commissioning of our ammonia cracking pilot unit in Antwerp is a key milestone. This is a world’s first which paves the way for new low-carbon hydrogen supply chains. By proving the viability of industrial-scale ammonia cracking, Air Liquide demonstrates its capacity to innovate and provide concrete solutions for its customers, and contributing to the Energy Transition. I am immensely proud of the work and commitment of all our teams who made this achievement possible.
Armelle Levieux, Air Liquide Executive Committee, in her organisation’s official press release, 13 Nov 2025
Development of SMR-XTM technology for ammonia cracking
The tech development pathway towards Project ARCAS was featured in our recent global review of ammonia cracking technologies. In the mid-2010s, Air Liquide developed the SMR-XTM technology, introducing a counter-current helix-heat exchanger inside the reactor tubes for steam methane reforming, to improve the energy efficiency of the overall process. Advantages of the process include a lower gas outlet temperature, and flexibility regarding steam production in the downstream process, including process designs without steam export. Air Liquide then adapted its SMR-XTM technology as a basis for its ammonia cracking technology. In a “clean fuel mode”, the reported hydrogen yield is about 139 kilograms of hydrogen per ton ammonia feedstock, or about 80%.
In December 2024, Air Liquide received a €110 million grant from the European Innovation Fund for the ENHANCE project, which aims to produce liquid hydrogen via ammonia cracking and subsequent hydrogen liquefaction. This project will build on lessons learned from the ARCAS pilot project, and feature a retrofit of one of Air Liquide’s existing hydrogen production units at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges. The production capacity of this new cracker will be around 30,000 tons of liquid hydrogen annually.