Instantaneous hydrogen production from ammonia by non-thermal arc plasma combining with catalyst

Owing to the storage and transportation problems of hydrogen fuel, exploring new methods of the realtime hydrogen production from ammonia becomes attractive. In this paper, non-thermal arc plasma (NTAP) combining with NiO/Al2O3 catalyst is developed to produce hydrogen from ammonia with high efficiency and large scale. The effects of ammonia gas flow rate and discharge power on the gas temperature, electron density, the hydrogen production rate, and energy efficiency were investigated. Experimental results show that the optical emission spectrum of NTAP working with pure ammonia medium was dominated by the atom spectrum of H alpha, H beta, and molecular spectrum of NH component. Under the optimum experimental condition of plasma discharge, the highest energy efficiency of hydrogen production reached 783.4 L/kW.h at NH3 gas flow rate of 30 SLM. When the catalyst was added, and heated by the NTAP simultaneously, the energy efficiency further increased to 1080.0 L/kW.h. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Automated summary

This paper presents a method of producing hydrogen from ammonia in real time with high efficiency and large scale, using non-thermal arc plasma (NTAP) combined with a NiO/Al2O3 catalyst. The study investigates the effects of ammonia gas flow rate and discharge power on the hydrogen production process, and experimental results demonstrate high energy efficiency under optimal plasma discharge conditions.