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PS does require ammunition, if the weapon that uses it requires ammunition. It has no rule to overwrite or circumvent the general rule.
Expend
This indicates how much ammunition is consumed with each ranged Strike you make with the weapon. Anytime the weapon is fired, the ammunition in its magazine is lowered by the number indicated. Other abilities might cite the use of expend as the amount of ammo required to complete the action.
Consumables are destroyed upon use, so technically you may be able to use a Primary Target strike, but then the grenade is done for and therefore nothing left to use the AoE with, which may be an interesting rule interaction. Not sure about that though.
Consumable
An item with this trait can be used only once. Unless stated otherwise, it's destroyed after activation. Consumable items include serums and magical consumables such as spell ampoules and spell gems. When a character creates consumable items, they can make them in batches of four.
This appears to be ambiguous. Rotfell has already taken up one side of the debate quite nicely, so I'll take the other.
Primary Target does not mention using ammunition or Expend for the Strike that it makes. It also does not say that you don't use Expend for the Strike that it makes. That is where the ambiguity comes from.
Primary Target is explicitly compatible with Area weapons, and the Area trait says that the only way to fire the weapon is with the Area Fire action. You have no option to make a Strike with a weapon like a Flamethrower under normal circumstances. Primary Target doesn't have any explicit override rule removing that restriction either - only an implied override caused by listing Area weapons as compatible with the ability and saying to make a Strike.
An implied override is valid and should be honored, but it does leave a lot of information unspecified.
A Grenade is also fired by using the Area Fire action, the same as the Flamethrower. There is no option to make a Strike with a Grenade, the same as the Flamethrower. So there is no reason to say that a Grenade is not compatible with Primary Strike any more than there is for a Flamethrower. A Grenade has the same implied override to make a Strike with as Area Fire weapons do because they should be compatible with Primary Target.
A Grenade does not use ammunition in addition to not being allowed to use a Strike action to fire them with. Since Grenades should be compatible with Primary Target, then this also has an implied override. You still make the Strike with the weapon in addition to the Area Fire attack with the weapon. It is up to the GM to determine how that works.
I see two options. Either the Strike from Primary Target has an implied override that it uses no additional Expend from any weapon that is used (including the Flamethrower or other Area Fire or Automatic weapons), or Grenades can be ruled to have an effective Expend of 0 when the Strike from Primary Target is used (since it lists no Expend value itself).
I can't contribute from a rules perspective, but I've been trying to imagine what it would look like to primary target + area fire someone with the same grenade.
Is it literally just like, hitting them in the head like a baseball pitch before it bounces and explodes? That's kinda amazing.
I can sort of see it. I am of the mind that the primary target does not expend extra ammo. Basically when you do an area attack that primary target is your primary target of that so it gets hit first with the initial direct part of the aoe/autofire. So for a grenade you threw it at somebody and it contact detonated on your primary target so they get that initial hit of damage before the aoe damage of everything else does not seem unreasonable.
For a automatic weapon you aimed at one dude before you walked your fire on everybody else in the area.
For blast aoe weapons it would be like the grenade your primary target is the poor sap that was ground zero of your shot gets the extra helping of damage.
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Yes, the ruling that Primary Target uses no additional ammunition for any weapon is for framing the extra damage as just a mechanics thing.
Mechanically, the player rolls to hit like they would for a Strike and if successful they deal extra damage to that primary target.
Narratively, the character uses their weapons training and experience to make sure that they hit this primary target extra hard with their area weapon. They don't shoot the weapon at that primary target additional times .
Does the strike you roll from Primary Target do damage separately from the area effect or does it merely adjust the saving throw on a hit?