Neat! I’d like to know more, like how efficient it is to create hydrogen this way, or how long it takes compared to conventional methods.
Thermodynamically you start with ~55MJ/kg available if you were to oxidise the methane.
Then you end with 750g of carbon that would give you ~35MJ/kg were you to oxidise it or 26MJ. And 250g of hydrogen that would give you 120MJ/kg or 30MJ
If it were 100% efficient and free then for the cost of the input methane you could get the same amount of thermal energy with a solar panel or wind turbine and a resistor. This is a science proof of concept so expect single digit efficiency which is unrelated to pkssible scaling
As far as ways of greenwashing fossil methane go, it might actually have some potential positive effect, although the hydrogen produced will not be competitive except as backup energy.
As a thing to do with waste-emission methane it might be better than burning it. You’d still need some way of storing the hydrogen that is competitive with overbuilding solar + 4-12hr batteries (none presently exists).
Thanks!
You’re processing methane into just hydrogen and pure carbon
That’s interesting because carbon is a solid, not a greenhouse gas. If this process scales up, I wonder what we would do with vast quantities of carbon? In the worst case we could bury it, like a reverse coal mine.
