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Ultrafast ammonia decomposition using an electrified tungsten wire lightbulb reactor

Nature Chemical Engineering volume 2, pages 640–649 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ammonia decomposition is a key reaction in the green hydrogen economy because ammonia is an important carbon-free hydrogen carrier. In contrast to the prevalent focus on developing active catalysts to address the reaction’s slow kinetics at low temperatures, we introduce a tungsten wire lightbulb reactor that operates at unconventionally locally high temperatures while maintaining enhanced efficiency. Near the wire, the local temperature reaches up to 1,800 K, enabling ultrafast ammonia decomposition with rate constants much higher than those of leading catalysts under typical reaction conditions. Concurrently, the sharp temperature decrease along the radial direction allows for low power input, thus enhancing energy efficiency. The lightbulb reactor also realized up to 99.995% conversion at enhanced power input without the use of additional separation steps. We further propose a scaled-up reactor design that is two to three orders of magnitude smaller than current state-of-the-art reactors and highlight its potential applications within the emerging hydrogen economy.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of the TWL reactor concept.
Fig. 2: Experimental performance of a laboratory-scale TWL reactor.
Fig. 3: Heat and mass transport in the laboratory-scale TWL reactor based on modeling.
Fig. 4: Reducing convective and radiative heat loss in the laboratory-scale reactor.
Fig. 5: Proposed scaled-up applications of the TWL reactor.
Fig. 6: Energy balance of the TWL reactor at different conditions and scales.

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Data availability

All data supporting this investigation are available in the article and its Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this manuscript.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Singapore Low-Carbon Energy Research (LCER) Funding Initiative hosted under A*STAR for the financial support (award no. U2102d2005, to N.Y.) and the RIE2025 USS LCER Phase II Programme (award no. U2305D4002, to N.Y.). N.Y. acknowledges support from National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under its NRF Investigatorship (NRFI07-2021-0015).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Keshia Saradima Indriadi, Sie Shing Wong.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Keshia Saradima Indriadi, Sie Shing Wong, Peijie Han, Sikai Wang, Di Xu & Ning Yan

  2. Joint School of National University of Singapore and Tianjin University, Fuzhou, China

    Keshia Saradima Indriadi, Di Xu & Ning Yan

  3. Centre for Hydrogen Innovations, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Ning Yan

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  1. Keshia Saradima Indriadi
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Contributions

K.S.I. performed experiments, conducted simulations, analyzed data and wrote and revised the manuscript. S.S.W. performed experiments, conducted simulations, analyzed data and revised the manuscript. P.H. performed experiments, conducted density functional theory calculations, analyzed data and wrote the manuscript. S.W. performed experiments and analyzed data. D.X. analyzed data and revised the manuscript. N.Y. conceived and supervised the entire study and revised the manuscript. All authors have discussed the results and given approval to the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ning Yan.

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Nature Chemical Engineering thanks Huajie Yin and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Experimental Methods, Computational Methods, Texts 1–6, Figs. 1–36 and Tables 1–3.

Supplementary Video 1

Infrared Video: Stability of tungsten wire.

Supplementary Video 2

Infrared Video: Heating/cooling of tungsten wire.

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Indriadi, K.S., Wong, S.S., Han, P. et al. Ultrafast ammonia decomposition using an electrified tungsten wire lightbulb reactor. Nat Chem Eng 2, 640–649 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44286-025-00283-x

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