GenCell Energy, an Israeli technology company, recently announced a research collaboration with Fraunhofer UMSICHT, a German research institute, that will deliver a "scale-up of the catalyst synthesis process" for cracking ammonia. This will enable GenCell "to produce large quantities of a novel inexpensive catalyst for generation of hydrogen from ammonia."
AFC Energy PLC, the British fuel cell company, announced on May 20 the successful conclusion of “ammonia to power (‘A2P’) fuel cell generator trials.” The result is “proof of concept” for a system consisting of an "off the shelf" ammonia cracker and a proprietary alkaline fuel cell that can readily utilize hydrogen with residual quantities of uncracked ammonia. The achievement positions AFC “to conclude work on the business case and engineering of an integrated, scalable ammonia fuelled clean power generator.”
In the last 12 months ... IHI Corporation tested its 1 kW ammonia-fueled solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) in Japan; Project Alkammonia concluded its work on cracked-ammonia-fed alkaline fuel cells (AFC) in the EU; the University of Delaware's project for low-temperature direct ammonia fuel cells (DAFC) continues with funding from the US Department of Energy's ARPA-E; and, in Israel, GenCell launched its commercial 4 kW ammonia-fed AFC with field demonstrations at up to 800 locations across Kenya.
I wrote earlier today about a new literature review on "Ammonia for Power," published in November 2018. As a companion piece to that article, I'd like to highlight another open-access literature review, this one published a few years before we launched Ammonia Energy, which focuses completely on the (perhaps unexpectedly) broad subject of direct ammonia fuel cells. The mini-review, "Ammonia as a suitable fuel for fuel cells," was published in the August 2014 edition of Frontiers in Energy Research, written by Rong Lan and Shanwen Tao of the University of Strathclyde in the UK.
GenCell Energy, the Israeli fuel cell manufacturer, has made two major announcements in the last month. In June, it unveiled its ammonia-fueled alkaline fuel cell system. In July, it announced its first commercial customer. Its A5 Off-Grid Power Solution is a "nano power plant that operates fully independent of the grid." The first phase of product trials, using ammonia as a fuel to provide uninterruptible power to cell phone masts, will begin in Kenya by the end of this year, and "product roll-out" is expected in the second half of 2019.
Following last year’s field trials of Diverse Energy’s PowerCube technology in Africa (and AFC Energy’s subsequent acquisition of assets from Diverse), an EU-funded project to commercialize ammonia-fed fuel cells for stationary power generation continues to gather momentum under the title “Project Alkammonia".
