Electrically Driven Gaseous Ammonia Decomposition for Hydrogen Production over SiC-Mediated Catalyst without External Heating

Hydrogen (H2) production from the ammonia (NH3) decomposition reaction (ADR) is promising to build a carbon-free H2 world. However, the temperature usually needs to be above 400 °C to achieve more than 80% NH3 conversion in conventional thermal ADR (TADR), which results in high energy consumption. In this work, an electrically driven, energy-saving gaseous ammonia decomposition reaction (EADR) strategy without external heating on a SiC-mediated Ru/Al2O3 composite catalyst is presented to achieve highly efficient ADR under much milder conditions than TADR. An 85% NH3 conversion was achieved at ca. 230 °C at weight hourly space velocities (WHSVs) of 12,000 mL gcat–1 h–1, close to the equilibrium conversion at the corresponding temperature, and a more than 4-fold reduction in energy consumption was achieved. The efficient EADR can be attributed to the enhanced N–N recombination and hydrogen migration at low temperatures due to the effective current carrier activation effect in the electric field. The energy-saving electrification strategy allows for solving the common dilemma of improving the NH3–H2 conversion efficiency at low temperatures without a complex catalyst design.