
Can natural gas fields be converted into hydrogen fuel production facilities?
June 13, 2024Scientists have suggested that heading directly to the fields is an efficient way to create H2
Researchers from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology university in Moscow, Russia claim to have discovered a method of hydrogen fuel production using natural gas.
Their description said the production method had a 45 percent efficiency
The scientists’ method is meant to be used at the natural gas fields themselves. It involves injecting steam and a catalyst directly into the natural gas well, and to ignite the gas with oxygen. This combustion assisted by the catalyst results in a mixture of H2 and CO2, from which the hydrogen gas can be extracted without much difficulty.
The reason the scientists are enthusiastic about pushing this method into use is that they say its ease and efficiency can support the transition from using fossil fuels to using H2 instead. The researchers published their findings in the Fuel journal.
Using this hydrogen fuel production to wean off fossil fuels
Worldwide, about 80 percent of energy is produced using fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas, and coal. The remainder is from other methods such as nuclear and renewable energy, among others. Using fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – among other environmental impacts – contributing to the climate crisis. While natural gas is believed to be somewhat “cleaner” than using oil and coal, its use still results in CO2 emissions, meaning that it still plays a role in climate change.
Hydrogen fuel, on the other hand, emits only water vapor and heat when used in fuel cells. For this reason, among others, it is broadly believed to be a clean alternative to fossil fuels as a source of energy. That said, among the primary barriers to its widespread use has to do with challenges in its production.
Making hydrogen fuel directly from natural gas fields
By their very nature, natural gas fields have a high H2 content as they are greatly composed of hydrocarbons. This means that if you work at the molecular level, the H2 can be separated from the hydrocarbons that contain them. The trick is to create this clean source of energy without resulting in a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions by doing so.
When the method developed by the Skolkovo team is used, it burns the natural gas, converting it into a combination of carbon monoxide and H2. While this may sound as though it’s creating the very problem that the use of hydrogen fuel is meant to solve, the researchers have also focused on carbon capture and storage in order to overcome it. The carbon dioxide that results from the production of the carbon monoxide remains within the natural gas reservoir instead of being released into the atmosphere.
Carbon capture and storage is a controversial subject with regards to dealing with CO2 emissions, as it is not 100 percent effective, and many experts call it short-term thinking. They say that a clean method of hydrogen fuel production is far superior to one that maintains a reliance on fossil fuels and requires emission mitigation strategies.
That said, others argue that this type of short-term solution using the types of resources that are already readily available are what will help to bridge the gap until cleaner methods of H2 production can be scaled up and established worldwide.
Testing the process
To test their method, the scientists created a simulated gas reservoir environment within their lab reactors. They added crushed rock within the reactor, then added the methane (natural gas), the catalyst, and the oxygen. The reactor’s pressure was kept at a level that is typical to naturally occurring gas reservoirs, which is about eighty times the natural atmosphere above ground.
This production of hydrogen from natural gas is the standard way that fossil methane is converted with steam into millions of tons of hydrogen every year by the oil and petrochemical industries, to be used to improve their products, but for every ton of hydrogen produced by this process (SMR) it releases around 9.3 tons of fossil CO2 for every ton of hydrogen produced. Volume capture of the CO2 at large scale has yet to be achieved, but at best it will still only capture up to 90% of the fossil CO2; the resulting hydrogen is named “blue hydrogen”, so it will be a useful stepping stone to help the development of the hydrogen market up to 2050 when all the hydrogen needs to be produced by fossil free electricity helped by the energy of steam or just by heat alone.
The billion dollar question is whether there is a chance/risk that this can be competitive with green Hydrogen.
Solar Hydrogen cost dived massively 2023 where 444GW new solar power capacity was added and hardware cost were 43% cheaper than ever in history.
To assess where the market is going the biggest supplier through history of Hydrogen generation capacity with more than 50% global market share over decades is Topsoe and they believe the market will move to green hydrogen and have launched their SOEC technology to that end.
very reminiscent of Underground Coal Gasification. How well did that work. So say it works. you are in the middle of nowhere and so how do you transport the hydrogen to the offtaker??
I will be pleased to discuss this with you and provide information about a technology we are introducing that achieves the same as the Russian claim and achieves up to 90% efficiency for the suggested application. It has been proven in Canada with funding from the Canadian government.
Gee, just use the methane to power our current vehicles. It has 80 to 90 percent lower emissions than petroleum fuels!
Fugitive emission is the problem and the fact that 75% og Methane by mass is Carbon while Gasoline is 84.1%. Methane is 55.6MJ/kg while Gasoline is 46.4MJ/kg. So for Methane to approach the emission from Gasoline there has to be very little energy expenditure to explore, develop, produce, route and distribute methane plus especially important super low fugitive emissions and super low unburnt Methane escaping the motors.
All in all Methane is not lower emissions than petroleum fuels but in reality worse than petroleum fuels given the current fugitive emissions.
Methane pyrolysis of natural gas has a number of pilot projects underway and commercial production plans. Converting NG to pure H2 and some form of solid carbon, creates no CO2 pollution, uses comparatively little electricity and zero fresh water!
A small footprint pyrolysis plant at point of use, ie. after the NG gas feed and before the tweaked to H2 boiler burn, utilizes all the NG infrastructure and creates green hydrogen at point of use or for regional purposes and a new carbon resource as a byproduct.
Natural gas and coal gasification was used for fuel cells in the early 70’s. Didn’t worry about needing to plant more trees at the time. It gave very high electrical generation efficiency around 70%.
Studies were done by Western Electric in Rapid City, South Dakota.