Scientists at MIT have discovered a new way to extract high-purity hydrogen from ammonia while using a lot less energy than previous technologies. The breakthrough could provide a critical inroad toward reducing the energy and ecological footprint of the hydrogen sector, which powers a wide range of industrial processes and technologies from fuel cells to computer chip manufacturing.
Green hydrogen has often been touted as a silver-bullet solution for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors like the shipping industry and steelmaking, as the gas can be combusted at high heat like thermal coal, heavy fuel oil, or natural gas but leaves behind nothing but water vapor when burned. The problem is that most hydrogen is not green, it’s made using fossil fuels, negating its utility as a clean energy alternative. Plus, green hydrogen is often a costly and inefficient use of renewable energy resources that could be more appropriately used in other more direct applications.
This is why the MIT breakthrough is, in fact, a breakthrough – rather than reducing hydrogen’s greenhouse gas footprint by consuming more renewable energy, it is simply reducing the amount of energy needed in the hydrogen gas lifecycle. Storing liquefied hydrogen in ammonia for transportation purposes is not novel. But until now that process, too, has had such significant inefficiencies that its relative merits were a subject of major debate in the scientific community.
Moreover, it marks critical progress toward solving a major issue in the hydrogen supply chain that has prevented green hydrogen from becoming commercially viable. “Even if production costs decrease in line with predictions, storage and distribution costs will prevent hydrogen from being cost-competitive in many sectors,” Roxana Shafiee, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, told The Harvard Gazette back in 2024.
“Cracking,” the traditional means of extracting hydrogen from ammonia, “requires huge amounts of energy to temperatures higher than 500 degrees Celsius to achieve high reaction rates and conversion,” according to a recent report from MIT News. But the new process suggested by MIT researchers uses new chemical processes to change that calculus.
“We wanted to ask whether we could use electrical inputs to drive what would otherwise be an unfavorable dehydrogenation reaction, and simultaneously do it in a way that would separate the hydrogen from the hydrogen carrier, so that it would be very pure and could be used directly in a fuel cell or other application that requires a high purity hydrogen stream,” says Yogesh Surendranath, corresponding author for the study reporting these findings. The paper was published just this week in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.
This breakthrough is occurring against the backdrop of a recent resurgence in attention and investing toward low-emissions hydrogen. Changing geopolitics, skyrocketing energy demand projections driven by the artificial intelligence boom, and a high degree of energy market volatility stemming from the concurrent wars in Ukraine and Iran have pushed countries around the world to reevaluate their energy security strategies. The solution that many of these countries are arriving at is an all-of-the-above approach to a diversified and therefore more resilient energy mix.
China, the world’s largest hydrogen producer, introduced a goal to ramp up production of hydrogen, and especially green hydrogen, more quickly than previously planned in its 15th five-year plan. China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) recently named hydrogen as a “strategic lever” for national energy autonomy and resilience, and has therefore pledged to fast-track domestic development.
Leaders in Europe are likewise newly bullish on the development of the previously flagging industry. In April, ministers from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain petitioned the European Union to loosen production regulations to encourage investment into the sector. Even the Trump administration has indicated renewed interest in hydrogen – earlier this year, Trump’s office instructed the Department of Energy to save $5 billion worth of Biden-era hydrogen hubs that were slated for closure.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
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