Behind the scenes of Europe’s energy transition, researchers are reinventing how hydrogen can be stored and moved. Their compact ceramic reactor cracks ammonia, separates and compresses hydrogen in one go. A breakthrough that could make global transport cleaner, faster, and far more efficient in the race to net zero

The countdown is advancing, and the delay already accumulated leaves no choice: to keep global temperature rise within the critical 1.5°C threshold, reaching net zero by 2050 is imperative. Yet energy efficiency, electrification, and renewables will not be enough. Together, they can only deliver around 70% of the emission reductions needed, warns the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Hydrogen must therefore play its part in the decarbonisation effort—especially where other options remain immature or prohibitively expensive. According to IRENA’s estimates, “it could contribute 10% of the mitigation needed to achieve the 1.5°C scenario and represent 12% of final energy demand.” As early as 2020, the European Commissioner for Climate and Executive Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, acknowledged that “with the world moving ahead on the need to decarbonise and to commit to climate neutrality, the importance of hydrogen increases on almost a daily basis.” Yet, progress has been uneven. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently revised downward its 2030 forecast for low-emission hydrogen production by almost 25%, citing project cancellations, rising costs, and policy uncertainty.

The transport challenge

“Although hydrogen is a very potent energy carrier, storing and transporting it remains challenging and expensive,” states Farid Akhtar, professor of Engineering Materials at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, who specialises in materials design for energy and environmental applications. Global hydrogen transport infrastructure remains minimal, with few dedicated pipelines, terminals, or storage facilities—and the element’s chemical properties add further complexity. “Hydrogen is the smallest molecule. Storing and transporting it are challenging because of its low volumetric energy density: you typically use very high pressures (≈350–700 bar) or very low temperatures (~20 K). It also raises safety and leakage concerns, as hydrogen permeates many materials and has a wide flammability range and low ignition energy,” he explains. For this reason, one of the most promising approaches—especially for long-distance transport—is to convert hydrogen into so-called carriers, such as ammonia. “Ammonia is liquid at ambient temperature and pressure, and therefore easy to transport,” says Selene Hernández Morejudo, Research Manager at CoorsTek Membrane Sciences AS in Oslo, Norway. “The infrastructure already exists, because ammonia is produced in large quantities and shipped worldwide.” Akhtar agrees, noting he has been repeating this argument for a decade: “Storage and transport of ammonia are generally less energy-intensive than for hydrogen, and the supporting infrastructure, safety regulations, and certified transport systems are already well established. What we need to do is convert hydrogen into ammonia, move it where it’s needed, and then either use it directly or recover the hydrogen by splitting the ammonia.”

Cracking the ammonia code

Crucial in this conversion process is what experts call ammonia cracking. “As the word suggests, ammonia cracking basically means breaking the ammonia molecule, which is made of one nitrogen atom and three hydrogen atoms,” explains Blaž Likozar, head of the Department of Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering at the Slovenian National Institute of Chemistry. “When you crack it, you get a mixture of nitrogen and hydrogen in a 1:3 ratio.” However, the process is endothermic, meaning it requires heat to proceed. “It’s relatively energy-intensive,” says Likozar, and depending on the final application of the hydrogen, it often needs to be followed by additional stages like purification, separation, and compression. “These take place in separate unit operations, each of which entails energy losses, requires energy input, and adds to operational costs. The purer and more compressed the hydrogen you want, the more energy it will cost you,” he adds.

Four steps in one: the SINGLE reactor

Integrating these four steps into a single process is precisely the goal of a European initiative coordinated by Morejudo. “In the process we developed within the SINGLE project, we can carry out all four steps in a single reactor: we supply the heat, convert the ammonia, separate the hydrogen, and compress it,” she explains. “When these processes are split across different reactors, you lose energy at every stage. But by combining them into one, we can significantly reduce those losses and achieve an energy efficiency of around 90%.” CoorsTek Membrane Sciences, which specialises in active ceramic membranes for energy conversion, developed the core component of this innovation: a proton ceramic electrochemical reactor. The processes inside it are complex, but its name reveals its essence. “Its key advantage,” says Morejudo, “is that it performs the entire process in one place. The inner part contains nickel—a very good catalyst for cracking ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen. Then, on the membrane surface, separation occurs: only hydrogen can pass through, effectively isolating it from the nitrogen.”

Towards industrial scale

From early 2026, this technology will be tested at a demonstration plant in Valencia, Spain, designed to produce 10 kilograms of hydrogen per day. Once validated, however, the system could easily be scaled up. “We designed our reactor as a modular system,” says Morejudo. “It’s made of what we call stacks, which can be assembled in virtually unlimited numbers. We want to demonstrate that it’s a flexible technology, adaptable to much larger scales for producing substantial amounts of hydrogen.” The stakes are high. As more countries adopt national hydrogen strategies, and as many emerging and developing economies tap into their abundant low-cost renewable energy resources, the foundations are being laid for competitive global hydrogen markets. Still, warns IRENA, to meet our climate goals, global production of green hydrogen and its derivatives must reach 523 million tonnes per year by 2050. “We don’t yet know how we’ll ultimately produce and transport our hydrogen, or which technologies will dominate,” admits Likozar. “But if Europe were to establish a clear, consolidated strategy for producing hydrogen from ammonia, then cracking would certainly become a crucial piece of the green transition puzzle.”

By Diego Giuliani

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Contacts

Gautier Papon and Selene Morejudo – project coordinators
info@singleh2.eu

Giacomo Destro – Communication & Dissemination Manager
Giacomo.destro@icons.it