Decarbonizing Canada's hydrogen production using low-cost methane pyrolysis catalytic reactors

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Canada's energy sector is facing major disruption in the face of climate change. For Canada to make its climate goals the Canadian oil and gas sector must produce vast amounts of hydrogen with little to no greenhouse gas emissions. A developing method of producing hydrogen from natural gas is thermal decomposition; where the gas is heated in the absence of oxygen to produce hydrogen, solid carbon, and small amounts of higher order hydrocarbons. Catalysts are often used in methane pyrolysis to improve conversion efficiency at lower temperatures. Carbon build-up (coke) in the reactor is a challenge in reactor design and methods are needed to remove the carbon. This work focuses on unique approaches in using low-cost disposable catalysts as preferred carbon nucleation sites in order to solve the problem of catalyst deactivation and coking. The work will focus on two reactor types: i) floating (aerosol) catalyst reactors and ii) packed-bed reactors. In the floating catalyst system nanoparticles of ferrocene suspended in the gas flow will be used as carbon nucleation sites where carbon can accumulate and be removed from the reactor. In parallel, the feasibility of using low-cost natural iron-containing minerals (e.g. limonite, hematite, and magnetite) in packed-bed reactors will be explored. The objective of this work is to develop open-source models for natural-gas thermo-catalytic decomposition (TCD) reactors. Model development will be done in parallel with experimental work to validate the models.