H2SITE Takes EIC Accelerator Money to an Antwerp Ammonia Cracker

Moving hydrogen is expensive: the EIC project's own summary says transport and storage can add up to 300% to its production cost, and it proposes ammonia, with its existing global distribution network, as the carrier. The catch is the last step, splitting the ammonia back into hydrogen, which conventional crackers do at 600 to 800 °C, according to the company. Hydrogen Onsite, S.L., which trades as H2SITE from Loiu near Bilbao, says its palladium membrane reactor cracks the ammonia and pulls out fuel-cell-grade hydrogen in a single unit at 400 to 450 °C.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, also called H2SITE, at its March 2025 cut-off for blended finance. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,499,999 under an agreement signed on 6 October 2025, running from 1 December 2025 to 30 November 2027, to build and demonstrate a one-tonne-a-day unit at the Port of Antwerp. Eleven months into that period, the company has published no construction or commissioning news for the Antwerp unit.

One reactor instead of a cracker and a purifier

Cracking splits ammonia into nitrogen and hydrogen; for a fuel cell, the hydrogen then has to be separated out to a high purity. H2SITE's reactor combines the catalytic decomposition and the selective separation of hydrogen through a palladium-based membrane in a single unit, according to the company. Its July 2025 announcement gives 400 to 450 °C against 600 to 800 °C for traditional cracking, and output meeting ISO 14687 Grade D, the fuel-cell standard; Hydrogen Fuel News reported the same Grade D claim. The company website claims 99.97% purity and recovery of up to 98% of the hydrogen. None of these figures comes from an independent test that could be found.

The CORDIS objective says the system is catalyst agnostic, modular and can be paired with an ammonia burner for heat. It sets carbon targets: 2.7 gCO2eq/MJ today, 0.5 after the EIC project, against 25 for conventional processes, which it presents as at least a 95% reduction against natural-gas-based hydrogen. These are the company's own numbers in its application.

The same membranes also work without the cracking step, as separators that pull hydrogen out of mixed gas streams. The website lists separator products for hydrogen blended into gas networks, natural hydrogen, storage and purification, alongside reactors for ammonia and for waste-derived syngas. That breadth matters for reading the company: the ammonia cracker is the EIC project, not the whole business.

What the EIC project promises

CORDIS states the project is at technology readiness level 6 and needs EIC support to develop and demonstrate a one-tonne-a-day minimum viable product at the Port of Antwerp, then adapt it for shipping and other uses, a market the application puts at €77 billion. The record is not consistent about what the tonne is: the CORDIS summary describes a unit producing "1 tonne of ammonia per day", while the company and Hydrogen Fuel News describe one tonne of hydrogen per day. The two are very different machines, since a tonne of ammonia holds well under a fifth of a tonne of hydrogen.

The port was first described only as being in north-west Europe. Capital Riesgo reported in September 2025 that the unit should serve as a reference for developments of up to 50 tonnes a day. The Port of Antwerp was named in CORDIS and again in the coverage of the 2026 funding round by Ship & Bunker and Capital Riesgo, neither of which gives a date. CORDIS shows no total project cost and no periodic report yet.

1. Signed grant agreementDoneSigned 6 October 2025, €2,499,999, per CORDIS.
2. One-tonne-a-day unit at the Port of AntwerpNot yet reportedNo construction, delivery or commissioning announced as of October 2026.
3. Cracking at 400 to 450 °C with Grade D outputCompany claimShown at small scale on a ship in 2023; no independent data at tonne scale.
4. 0.5 gCO2eq/MJ after the projectTargetApplication figure; no measurement published.

The record before Antwerp

The most concrete evidence that the reactor works outside a laboratory is a ship. In November 2023 H2SITE installed an integrated membrane reactor on the Bertha B, a 2,100 gross ton offshore supply vessel working from Bermeo for Enagás's La Gaviota gas storage platform, and fed the hydrogen to a fuel cell that powered the ship's auxiliary services while under way, as reported by The Maritime Executive and in the company release carried by Hydrogen Central. That work ran inside the H2OCEAN project led by the shipyard Astilleros de Murueta, funded by the Basque Government's HAZITEK programme and the European Regional Development Fund. No output figure for the ship unit was published in either source.

Two further deals followed in 2026. In April, H2SITE and the refiner Petronor announced a first-of-a-kind unit that integrates H2SITE membranes into steam methane reforming at Petronor's refinery, per Indian Chemical News and Hydrogen Central, which carried the company release of 19 April 2026; neither gives a size or a schedule. In September, Norway's Enova granted €3.4 million (NOK 39.1 million) to HydraNord Power, a 700 kW onboard ammonia-to-power system with Equinor, Höegh Autoliners and others, to be tested at Energy House in Stord with commissioning planned for early 2028, per Cyprus Shipping News and Ship & Bunker.

The January 2025 Series B announcement said H2SITE had built and operated 15 projects in Western Europe, per Hydrogen Central and Tecnalia, and set the goal of multi-tonne-a-day reactors in operation by 2026. The June 2026 release cited by Capital Riesgo claims more than 50,000 operating hours across reactors and separators and thousands of palladium membranes produced and recycled each year. No customer list or unit count beyond these company statements could be found, and no reactor running at several tonnes a day has been reported.

Money and the EIC Fund

ENGIE's venture arm took a minority stake in March 2020, when NS Energy described H2SITE as a Tecnalia and Eindhoven University of Technology spin-off. In January 2025 the company announced a €36 million Series B co-led by Hy24's Clean Hydrogen Equipment Fund and SC Net Zero Ventures, with Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Enagás Emprende, Equinor Ventures, Exergon, Ezten and MassMutual Ventures. A second close announced in June 2026 added the EIC Fund and an unnamed private investor and took the round above €42 million, per Ship & Bunker and Capital Riesgo. Neither gives the EIC Fund's amount.

The award was blended finance, a grant plus an equity component. The coverage describes the EIC Fund's investment as following the EIC Accelerator support, but no source found states whether it is the equity part of the March 2025 award or a separate decision, and the H2SITE entry could not be found on the EIC Fund beneficiaries page when it was checked on 28 October 2026. The figures below come from different sources and are not added together.

Accounts are thin in public. Empresite, drawing on Informa D&B data, puts turnover in a band of €0.6 to 1.5 million and staff at 59 in 2026; it does not give the year of the turnover band or a profit figure. The filed accounts themselves were not available free of charge. The register data shows the company as active, with its last recorded change on 30 August 2026.

Antwerp, imports and a crowded quay

The company's July 2025 announcement noted that more than 20 million tonnes of ammonia are already shipped by sea each year, which is the logistics the project wants to use. At the Port of Antwerp, H2SITE is not alone. Air Liquide started up what it calls the world's first industrial-scale pilot ammonia cracker, at 30 tonnes of ammonia a day, on the BASF site in the same port in November 2025, per WaterstofNet. H2SITE's pitch is not scale but form: the company describes a compact, modular design for decentralised production, and the EIC project plans to adapt it for ships. CORDIS tags the whole grant to climate action and 40% to clean air.

The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.