Hydrogen and nanocarbon are the two most emerging research topics in the field of environmentally benign energy and material science, respectively. These two treasured products can be simultaneously produced by methane transformation in a single step chemical approach. Hydrogen, the simplest, the lightest and the most abundant element in the known universe appears to be one of the auspicious energy carriers. There has been an intense research effort on this topic in recent years. Hydrogen is supposed to play a pertinent role as an energy vector in the near future mainly because of two reasons. Firstly, it can be produced from renewable raw materials such as water, biomass, or biogas. Secondly, it generates water as the only by-product during its combustion and oxidation. Furthermore, hydrogen produces three times higher quantity of energy (39.4kWh.kg-1) during its combustion than that produced by any other fuel on a mass basis, e.g. liquid hydrocarbons (13.1kWh.kg-1). Various hydrogen production method were developed, such as bio-hydrogen production, steam reforming of methane, partial oxidation, coal gasification, water splitting, biomass gasification, and thermochemical processes. Among them, methane cracking attracted as a novel technique for eco-friendly hydrogen production. In this moderately endothermic process, methane is thermally decomposed to solid carbon and gaseous hydrogen in a technically simple one step process as shown in equation (1). 

CH4  →  C + 2H2        ∆H298K = 74.52kJ/mol                                          (1)

The prime benefit of methane cracking is the near elimination of greenhouse gas release. Furthermore, nano-carbon, of possible interest for a variety of potential further applications, such as gas (e.g. hydrogen) storage, polymer additives, catalyst support or direct catalyst, is the co-product in methane decomposition process.

Dr. U.P.M Ashik (Research Assistant, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)

http://upmashik.yolasite.com/other-publications.php