Getting hydrogen out of ammonia

Kevin Turani-I-Belloto has developed a low-cost method for breaking down ammonia to produce hydrogen. EPFL/Alain Herzog - CC-BY-SA 4. Kevin Turani-I-Belloto has developed a low-cost method for breaking down ammonia to produce hydrogen. He's just been awarded a Bridge grant to develop a proof of concept for his technology. Without hydrogen, Kevin Turani-I-Belloto surely wouldn't have chosen hydrogen storage as the topic for his PhD thesis, and he probably wouldn't even have come to EPFL. But today, it's hydrogen's cousin ammonia - NH₃, a combination of hydrogen and nitrogen - that's keeping him busy. Turani-I-Belloto is an associate researcher at EPFL's Catalysis for Biofuels research group headed by Prof. Oliver Kröcher, and he's developed a catalyst that can break down ammonia at a lower cost than existing methods, and without the need for rare-earth metals.