Carbon-free green hydrogen production process with induction heating-based ammonia decomposition reactor

Abstract

This study presents an induction heating-based reactor for ammonia decomposition and to achieve a 150 Nm3/h carbon-free green hydrogen production process. The developed metallic monolith reactor acts by increasing the reactor temperature through an electromagnetic induction method using renewable-based electricity. As a result, hydrogen is produced without the generation of air pollutants such as CO2, which are formed via the conventional production pathway. Furthermore, techno-economic analysis was conducted based on exergy and economic analysis to evaluate the feasibility of the developed process. Experimentally, the proposed reactor showed an ammonia conversion of 90.0 % at 600 ℃ and 7 barg. Exergy analysis indicated that the total unused exergy accounted for 45.79 % of the total exergy input, giving an exergy efficiency of 54.21 % for the overall process. Furthermore, the CAPEX and OPEX values are calculated as 1,599,567 USD and 644,719 USD/y, respectively; therefore, the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) was calculated to be 6.98 USD/kgH2. This study also demonstrated that the LCOH varies with the ammonia feed price and the process capacity, and so it would be expected to decrease from 6.98 to 5.33 USD/kgH2 as the hydrogen production capacity is increased from 150 to 500 Nm3/h. Overall, our results confirm the feasibility of carbon-free green hydrogen production on on-site hydrogen refueling stations, and they will be expected to advance the development of an environmental hydrogen economy.