Me²H2-Methane pyrolysis

Initial situation

  • Hydrogen has a steadily growing importance as an industrial feedstock in many industrial processes, as a flexible energy sources or in the field of mobility.
  • Currently hydrogen is produced predominantly in industrially established processes that use fossil fuels and generate CO2 in proportion to the quantities of hydrogen produced.
  • New low carbon technologies for hydrogen production, e.g. the water electrolysis, are still in the development stage and yield a high specific energy consumption.
  • Due to the significant rise in demand for electricity in the future, economically viable, CO2-neutral hydrogen production must, above all, be energy-efficient.

Project agenda

  • Comparative technical and economic evaluation of possible process variants for methane pyrolysis with other industrial processes of hydrogen production.
  • Characterization of carbon from methane pyrolysis and specification of quality criteria for the exploitation in steel industry applications.
  • Investigation of the mechanical processing and thermal utilization of the solid pyrolysis carbon to set the required quality criteria.
  • Supply and evaluation of carbonaceous sample batches for selected applications.
  • Establish an evaluation matrix as a basis for selecting possible applications for the carbon products.

Desired results

  • Development of an industrial process to produce H2 by natural gas pyrolysis.
  • Development of a plant concept that enables CO2-neutral hydrogen production.
  • Development of quality requirements for the recovery of pyrolytic carbonaceous materials in steel industry processes.
  • Establishment of a recovery concept for the resulting carbon.
back