Reactor design and performance optimisation for catalytic hydrogen production from methane

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Natural gas into hydrogen and graphite has the potential to be highly disruptive and presents substantial value if the process can be scaled up to commercial quantities. Hydrogen is the energy source considered an increasingly vital component of low carbon future. Potential to capture all the value in natural gas and benefit from exposure to several high growth markets (including the graphite market for Li ion batteries and the hydrogen market for fuel cell technology). The established industrial hydrogen and graphite markets are currently worth over $100bn and $13bn, respectively.The methane cracking process is well understood however, there is a need to design a reactor that optimises the reaction. The main requirement of the reactor is to reduce/nullify CO2 emission from the process. There should be the incorporation of the process in which the carbon is captured "clean" as graphite rather than vented "dirty" as CO2, as is the case for most current hydrogen production methods. Other challenges include safe removal of carbon produced, continuous methane cracking, replacement of catalyst, pressure building, clogging of catalyst, and continuous removal of carbides. Therefore, there is a big gap that this research can fill in by designing the optimised reactor for the proposed reaction by means of different simulation tools like CFD (Star CCM & COMSOL).