ARENHA (Advanced materials and Reactors for Energy storage tHrough Ammonia) is a European project with global impact seeking to develop, integrate and demonstrate key material solutions enabling the use of ammonia for flexible, safe and profitable storage and utilization of energy. Ammonia is an excellent energy carrier due to its high energy density, carbon-free composition, industrial know-how and relative ease of storage. ARENHA demonstrates the feasibility of ammonia as a dispatchable form of large-scale energy storage, enabling the integration of renewable electricity in Europe and creating global green energy corridors for Europe energy import diversification. Innovative Materials are developed and integrated into ground-breaking systems in order to demonstrate a flexible and profitable power-to-ammonia value chain but also several key energy discharge processes. Specifically, ARENHA will develop advanced SOEC for renewable hydrogen production, catalysts for low temperature/pressure ammonia synthesis, solid absorbents for ammonia synthesis intensification and storage, catalysts and membrane reactors for ammonia decomposition. Energy discharge processes studied in ARENHA tackle various applications from ammonia decomposition into pure H2 for FCEV, direct ammonia utilization on SOFCs for power and ICEs for mobility. ARENHA will demonstrate the full power-to-ammonia-to-usage value chain at TRL 5 and the outstanding potential of green ammonia to address the issue of large scale energy storage through LCA, sociological survey, techno-economic analysis deeply connected with multiscale modeling. ARENHA’s ambitious objectives will be tackled by a consortium of 11 partners from universities, RTO, SMEs and large companies covering the adequate set of skills and market positioning. Considering the global nature of the ARENHA project, the consortium will strongly interact with its international advisory board composed of key energy stakeholders from the 5 continents.

The REFLEX project aims at developing an innovative renewable energies storage solution, the “Smart Energy Hub”, based on reversible Solid Oxide Cell (rSOC) technology, that is to say able to operate either in electrolysis mode (SOEC) to store excess electricity to produce H2, or in fuel cell mode (SOFC) when energy needs exceed local production, to produce electricity and heat again from H2 or any other fuel locally available. The challenging issue of achieving concomitantly high efficiency, high flexibility in operation and cost optimum is duly addressed through improvements of rSOC components (cells, stacks, power electronics, heat exchangers) and system, and the definition of advanced operation strategies. The specifications, detailed system design and the advanced operation strategies are supported by modelling tasks. An in-field demonstration will be performed in a technological park, where the Smart Energy Hub will be coupled to local solar and mini-hydro renewable sources and will provide electricity and heat to the headquarters of the park. It will demonstrate, in a real environment, the high power-to-power round-trip efficiency of this technology and its flexibility in dynamic operation, thus moving the technology from Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3 to 6. The Smart Energy Hub being modular, made of multistacks/multimodules arrangements, scale up studies will be performed to evaluate the techno-economic performance of the technology to address different scales of products for different markets. To reach these objectives, REFLEX is a cross multidisciplinary consortium gathering 9 organisations from 6 member states (France, Italy, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland). The partnership covers all competences necessary: cells and stacks development and testing (ELCOGEN, CEA, DTU), power electronics (USE, GPTech), system design and manufacturing (SYLFEN), system modelling (VTT), field test (Envipark), techno-economical and market analysis (ENGIE).

Methanol is a crucial commodity in the chemical sector and a potential building block of the future sustainable chemical industry. To date, the majority of methanol is produced from fossil fuels (either natural gas or coal) with associated CO2 emissions of 0.3 Gt/year (about 10% of total chemical sector emissions). Biomass is a sustainable alternative to conventional hydrocarbon feedstocks. However, due to its high carbon and oxygen content, conventional second-generation biomass-to-methanol processes achieve 40-45% of carbon efficiency and result in venting most of the carbon back to the atmosphere as CO2. BeBOP is a 4-year project that aims to develop a novel versatile, disruptive, and multi-product biomass and power to methanol plant, that can transform the methanol industry. Thanks to the integration of an electrolysis cell within the syngas conditioning line, the BeBOP concept can double the methanol productivity ans achieve >95% of total carbon efficiency and recover high value components from biomass gasification residues. The BeBOP project will showcase a first-of-a-kind TRL6 pilot plant ready to be scaled-up and replicated by the European biomass-based industry. BeBOP will enhance market opportunities in the short to medium term bringing the methanol production costs below 250 €/t (with long-term low-cost renewable electricity and including 150 €/tCO2 carbon credits) and shifting the 10% of the production from fossil-based to BeBOP configuration allowing to avoid the emission of more than 30 Mt of CO2 per year (3% of CO2 emissions in chemical industry). Preserving the quality of the end product at competitive costs, decreasing the GHG emissions, decreasing the costs of methanol production and creating new direct and indirect jobs, BeBOP will have a decisive impact in increasing the circularity of the European chemical sector.

qSOFC project combines leading European companies and research centres in stack manufacturing value-chain with two companies specialized in production automation and quality assurance to optimize the current stack manufacturing processes for mass production. Currently the state-of-the-art SOFC system capital expenditure (capex) is 7000…8000 €/kW of which stack is the single most expensive component. This proposal focuses on SOFC stack cost reduction and quality improvement by replacing manual labour in all key parts of the stack manufacturing process with automated manufacturing and quality control. This will lead to stack cost of 1000 €/kW and create a further cost reduction potential down to 500 €/kW at mass production (2000 MW/year). During the qSOFC project, key steps in cell and interconnect manufacturing and quality assurance will be optimized to enable mass-manufacturing. This will include development and validation of high-speed cell-manufacturing process, automated 3D machine vision inspection method to detect defects in cell manufacturing and automated leak-tightness detection of laser-welded/brazed interconnect-assemblies. The project is based on the products of its' industrial partners in stack-manufacturing value-chain (ElringKlinger, Elcogen AS, Elcogen Oy, Sandvik) and motivated by their interest to further ready their products into mass-manufacturing market. Two companies specialized in production automation and quality control (Müko, HaikuTech) provide their expertise to the project. The two research centres (VTT, ENEA) support these companies with their scientific background and validate the produced cells, interconnects and stacks. Effective exploitation and dissemination of resulting improved products, services, and know-how is a natural purpose of each partner and these actions are boosted by this project. This makes project results available also for other parties and increases competitiveness of the European fuel cell industry.

CLEANHYPRO gathers some of the most recognised experts in Europe on the electrolysis field for clean hydrogen production and acknowledged facilitators of technology transfer, corporate finance, funding and coaching, making available (i) the most promising and breakthrough manufacturing pilots and (ii) advanced characterization techniques and modelling together with (iii) non-technical services through this Test Bed: while relevant improvement metrics can be defined, the potential network of reachable stakeholders counts thousands of businesses on an international scale. Key facts are reported below. Within the scope of CLEANHYPRO, several circular innovative materials and key components, four main electrolysis technologies and geometries will be covered, providing for the first time a single entry point for industrial partners, mainly SMEs, aspiring to answer their concerns but with minimum investment costs and reduction of risks associated with technology transfer, while opening-up opportunities for demonstration of materials and components (TRL7) and thus faster opening the market for these new products. The main KPIs for CLEANHYPRO: Technical: >20% cell productivity improvement, 30% faster verification, 27-58% and 22-79% cost reduction of technologies in CAPEX and OPEX respectively, 3-9% efficiency enhancement. Non-Technical: 4 Showcases, 4 certification schemes, ≥16 Democases, >100 reachable SMEs and > 300 reachable investors. INNOMEM stems from the consideration that the development of products based on key materials and components for electrolysis require access to finance and an optimised business planning, relying on a sound prior analysis of the market, of the economic impacts and capacity of a company. The project aims at developing and organizing a sustainable Open Innovation Test Bed (OITB) for electrolysis materials and components for different applications. The OITB will also offer a network of facilities and services through a SEP to companies.