PROTOTYPE FOR PRODUCING HYDROGEN BY MEANS OF CLEAN WATER, AMMONIA AND RECYCLED ALUMINIUM.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

BACKGROUND

One of the EU's priorities is limiting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels. This is part of the fight against climate change. One of the most important areas for this fight is developing new and more efficient methods to produce electricity using renewable sources of energy. Hydrogen (H) is one of the fuels regarded as offering the best potential for reduced emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases. Although using hydrogen as a fuel is quite clean, there are currently two major disadvantages to using this gas as an alternative source of clean energy. Firstly, the production process is in most cases carried out by catalytic conversion of methane gas (CH4) , which itself generates an enormous amount of CO2. The second problem is that it is a voluminous element, both in gaseous and liquid states, and highly inflammable. Thus its storage and transportation would be both costly and dangerous and should probably be avoided.

OBJECTIVES

The 'H2ALRECYCLING' project aims to design and construct a pilot plant to obtain hydrogen for use as an alternative clean fuel using a new more environmentally friendly process. It seeks to exploit the reaction between aluminium and waste ammonium hydroxide from other industrial processes, which generates hydrogen as a by-product. It hopes to optimise the efficiency of the process for powering a fuel cell. In order to achieve this objective, the project will carry out the following specific tasks:

Evaluating the requirements that the pilot plant must meet for hydrogen production to be technically viable;

Conducting trials of the process for producing hydrogen to power a fuel cell at pilot scale to determine the critical variables that will influence the full design;

Designing and constructing the prototype process;

Operating and studying the prototype process through tests; and

Optimising the design and operational parameters of the prototype.

The project will evaluate the final results obtained from the optimised process through detailed analysis of the outputs achieved and environmental and financial costs involved. It will be compared with alternative processes. The results obtained will be disseminated as widely as possible, both at a national and international level.

Expected results

The project expects to establish a pilot plant for producing hydrogen from waste ammonium hydroxide (NH3(aq)) and aluminium (Al) to power a fuel cell. It is expected to attain the following results/output:

Zero production of greenhouse gases;

Efficiency of NH3 recovery above 80%;

100% energy efficiency of the hydrogen generation process;

An estimated efficiency of the global energy generation process of more than 80%;

A hydrogen production rate of 1.6 g H2/sec; and

A fuel cell with a potency of 80 kW.