The Council for Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), Delhi-based think-tank is preparing a pitch for the production of hydrogen using natural gas pyrolysis (NGP).
In NGP, natural gas is heated, typically by passing it through a column of extremely hot, molten metal (usually tin or iron). At temperatures of about 1,000 degrees C, the carbon and hydrogen in natural gas split; the hydrogen bubbles up and is captured, while the carbon floats on the metal, which is skimmed and the solid carbon put to industrial uses (graphene, carbon black etc).
In an article the Business Line newspaper quotes Hemant Mallya, Senior Programme Lead, CEEW, as saying that NGP is "a good interim solution" until green hydrogen from water electrolysis becomes economically viable.
It is understood that CEEW would be bringing in a report on NGP shortly. The message of the report is likely to be that NGP is a guilt-free way of using natural gas, as it emits no CO2.
BASF, the German chemical MNC, says that 3 kg of carbon is produced for every kg of hydrogen.
The article also takes note of research work underway at IIT-Madras in NGP, and speaks of the lab-level success achieved by Prof R Viny and Prof R Sarathy, in doing NGP at much lower temperatures, using a method called 'non thermal plasma'.
Comment
While India does not have much natural gas, whatever is available could be run through NGP to produce hydrogen, and perhaps thence to green ammonia.
India also does keep stumbling upon some natural gas resources here and there, as this report says. All the newly available natural gas could be, by policy, reserved for green hydrogen technologies, like NGP.
Besides, if coal or biomass is converted to methane, such methane, instead of being burnt, could be put into NGP for the production of green hydrogen and carbon.
Sources say that Birla Carbon is thinking of entering NGP, but this has not yet been confirmed with the company.
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