Project location: CanmetENERGY Ottawa, Ottawa, ON.
Timeline: 5 years (2023 to 2028)
Program: Industry and CCUS
Project overview
Natural gas decarbonization through thermal pyrolysis offers a means of low carbon hydrogen production, while also offering the benefit of selective byproduct handling and heat recovery. CanmetENERGY-Ottawa is both developing and assessing technologies for large scale hydrogen production technologies for techno-economic viability studies.
Core objectives
Our core objectives are to determine which technologies show the most potential for utility scale deployment (100 ton/day of hydrogen output or higher) while also reducing emissions from the current benchmark technology (steam methane reforming with a specific carbon intensity ranging between 7-12 kg CO2/kg H2) while also maintaining the cost of production below 2 USD/kg. This is achieved by both investigating current technology options through industrial and academic collaborations and through in-house development of novel thermal pyrolysis technologies.
Impact and benefits
This project hopes to reduce both the specific carbon intensity and cost of hydrogen production through process design and optimization to develop a portfolio of technologies for end-users to eventually deploy.
Key innovations
This project is currently assessing two non-catalytic thermal technologies. Both technologies currently being developed at CE-O have been selected for maximum scalability to facilitate production of hydrogen for mass distribution and/or industrial use.
Regenerative Heating Furnace: Intensification of the existing thermal carbon black process to maximize single-pass methane conversion and minimize polymerization reactions.
Bubbling Fluid Bed: Continuous removal of by-product carbon using a non-catalytic graphite bed material to minimize attrition impact on carbon by-product purity.
Upstream Fugitive Emissions Reduction: Incorporation of high CO2 feed to the pyrolizer to reduce the energy input and associated fugitive emissions from upstream gas sweeting with solvents.
Figure 1: CanmetENERGY-Ottawa’s two thermal natural gas pyrolysis technology options (left – twin bed regenerative heating furmace, right – non-catalytic bubbling fluid bed.
Facilities
Figure 2: CE-O high temperature, entrained flow drop tube furnace facility.
Figure 3: CE-O’s high temperature pressurized thermal pyrolysis system.
Contact CanmetENERGY in Ottawa
To learn more about this project, email the Office of Research Partnerships and External Relations.
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