Green or Turquoise hydrogen by thermal pyrolysis intensification (GOT-H2)

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Canadian central provinces are heavily dependent on fossil fuels production and existing pipelines do not support streaming pure hydrogen due to safety and technical issues. In 2019, Flaring and venting emitted about 6.5 Mton of CO2eq. A solution to this problem should be envisioned. The long term objective of this Discovery Grant (DG) is to develop a small-scale high residence time non-catalytic methane pyrolysis technology aimed at maximising hydrogen and carbon production, and to eliminate flaring, significantly reducing the green house gases emissions of the Canadian oil industry. Part of the hydrogen produced will maintain the extraction battery and generate the heat required for the process. The final reaction produces water, solid carbon, and energy. Currently, no solution is available for this high emitting industry as GtL technologies either co-produce CO2 or do not fully convert solution gas, which must be flared in any case. Also, recent technologies based on molten salts suffer from contamination problems and are characterized by heavy capital expenses (CAPEX). The objectives of this program are: 1. Understand the fundamentals of the non-catalytic pyrolysis reaction. Develop a kinetic model for natural gas pyrolysis, assess the influence of composition and process parameters on hydrogen yield and explore strategies to reduce carbon formation on reactor walls. Also, the boundaries of this research are not limited to natural gas, but also to other sources of energy that today are either burned or do not properly capture associated CO2 such as landfill gas and biogas. 2. Implementation of electrification, namely induction heating, to develop an intensified process which can eventually produce hydrogen for energy or other energy molecules such as methanol 3. Sets the framework for an environmental-technoeconomic process optimization. By coupling techno economic analysis and life cycle assessment (LCA) metrics, the design of an early stage process is truly optimized because it combines low cost and low environmental consequences. The main impacts of this DG research program will be 1. New technological approaches: This research will develop new reactor designs and envisage a new way to treat natural and biogas to produce hydrogen. 2.Economic: In Canada there are more than 3000 oil wells, and this number mounts when considering those in the USA. This new technology, never studied and optimized towards the abatement of flaring, has a huge economic return potential. Natural gas and landfill gas are targets of this technology. 3.Environmental: Gas and landfill flaring elimination will reduce about 1% of the total worldwide GHG emissions. 4. Training and formation of HQPs: The DG program and the technology I aim to study requires trained HQP to develop and operate these complex processes. Waste management, reactor design, and operation are among the future challenges and this DG will prepare and train versatile people to address them.