What does baking powder have to do with the hydrogen economy? Potentially quite a lot. Since early May 2026, a 40-foot container facility in Rostock-Laage in northern Germany has been running an industrial pilot that chemically binds green hydrogen to potassium bicarbonate – the potassium twin of the sodium bicarbonate sitting in most kitchen cupboards. The operator is Akros Energy, a subsidiary of Rostock-based hydrogen producer H2Apex.

The product of the reaction is potassium formate: a non-toxic salt that, as co-developer Henrik Junge of the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT) puts it, can be stored and transported essentially like milk, beer or diesel. No -253 °C cryogenics. No 700-bar high-pressure tanks. Just a salt solution in standard tank containers.

Why Europe will have to import hydrogen

The context for any new hydrogen carrier is the same on both sides of the Rhine: domestic production will not be enough. Germany alone uses around 2 million tonnes of hydrogen per year in industry, almost all of it grey – produced from natural gas, with roughly 10 kg of CO₂ released per kilogram of H₂. Replacing this with green hydrogen would require around 20 GW of electrolyser capacity. The German National Hydrogen Strategy targets 10 GW by 2030 – and even that target is widely seen as out of reach.

Estimates suggest 70–80% of long-term German hydrogen demand will have to be imported. Pipelines from Scandinavia, southern Europe and North Africa can cover part of that. But overseas imports – from Morocco, Australia, Chile or the Middle East – require hydrogen to be bound into a stable, shippable form. That is where the competition between carriers begins. And Switzerland, with no domestic large-scale electrolysis ambitions and a heavy chemical and transport sector, faces a very similar import logic.

The incumbent carriers: ammonia, LOHC, methanol

Three chemical hydrogen carriers dominate the current debate, each with their own trade-offs:

  • Ammonia (NH₃) is today’s default for intercontinental hydrogen shipping. According to plant builder Thyssenkrupp Uhde, around 20 million tonnes of ammonia already cross the oceans each year in liquid form, with roughly 130 ports worldwide equipped for loading and storage. It liquefies at -33 °C instead of -253 °C, and two ammonia tankers carry as much energy as three liquid-hydrogen tankers. The downside: ammonia is toxic, and cracking it back to hydrogen at the receiving end consumes energy.
  • LOHC (Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers) bind hydrogen into an oil-like liquid. They are well suited for shorter distances – from port to hinterland, for example – but the technology has yet to mature commercially. German front-runner Hydrogenious LOHC had to lay off around half of its workforce in February 2026 due to the sluggish ramp-up of the market.
  • Methanol is frequently mentioned as a hydrogen carrier, but is contested. Cracking it back to hydrogen releases CO₂, so the climate balance only works if the CO₂ used in methanol synthesis came from the atmosphere or biogenic sources in the first place. As a result, methanol is increasingly framed as an end product – particularly as a marine fuel – rather than as a pure carrier.

How Akros turns baking powder into a hydrogen medium

Akros Energy was spun out of H2Apex’s R&D division in 2024, building on a long-running research collaboration with the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT) in Rostock. The company now holds six patents on chemical hydrogen storage, two of them jointly with LIKAT.

The process runs in three steps:

  1. Loading. In a reactor with an aqueous potassium bicarbonate solution, hydrogen is bound to the bicarbonate at around 60 °C in the presence of a ruthenium catalyst. The result is potassium formate – a non-toxic salt that can be stored at ambient pressure.
  2. Transport. The loaded formate is moved in standard tank containers – no high pressure, no cryogenic cooling required.
  3. Release. At the destination, the loaded salt enters a second reactor, again with a ruthenium catalyst. Keeping the hydrogen partial pressure low reverses the reaction: the formate decomposes back into potassium bicarbonate, releasing hydrogen for use. The bicarbonate is then ready for another loading cycle.

CEO Johannes Emigholz, a software engineer with a background in scaling technologies, took over Akros in May 2025. In August 2025, the company secured a €4.4 million grant from the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the EU for the joint project FormaPort. Industrial partners Evonik and Siemens have come on board for the pilot plant now in operation. Akros plans to present the demonstrator at the World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam.

Where does baking powder fit in?

The original LIKAT concept, developed around Henrik Junge in 2024, focused on local applications – using the formate cycle as a hydrogen buffer for surplus wind or solar power in rural areas. Akros has since repositioned the technology as a candidate for global hydrogen trade. That puts it in direct competition with ammonia, which already has an established industrial ecosystem.

Three questions will decide whether the baking powder approach can carve out a niche:

  • How much energy does the loading-and-release cycle consume compared with ammonia or LOHC?
  • What is the gravimetric hydrogen density – how many kilograms of H₂ does each kilogram of salt actually transport?
  • How realistic is the scale-up path from a 40-foot container to commercial volumes?

So far, Akros has not published figures for any of these. CEO Emigholz speaks of standing "on the threshold of a revolution in energy storage" – but the threshold will only be crossed if the numbers add up.

SPIN perspective

From a Swiss Power-to-X Collaborative Innovation Network (SPIN) viewpoint, the Rostock pilot is interesting for two reasons. First, Switzerland will be an importer of green hydrogen and Power-to-X products, not a major exporter. Every new carrier option that lowers the cost or risk of overseas imports directly affects Swiss feasibility studies for sustainable aviation fuel, green steel feedstocks and decarbonised industrial heat.

Second, the carrier landscape is far from settled. Ammonia has the infrastructure advantage today, methanol is moving toward being an end product rather than a carrier, LOHC is struggling commercially, and now a salt-based formate cycle joins the race. For Swiss decision-makers – be it in the Federal Office of Energy, in industry consortia, or in the financial sector backing Power-to-X projects – the lesson is that no single carrier technology should be assumed to "win" before pilots like this one have published verifiable performance data. Diversification, both in supply geographies and in carrier chemistries, is the safer bet for the Swiss energy transition.

Source: ingenieur.de, 20 May 2026