“The potential for this technology and the product is huge.”

If all goes well, Pang estimates the system could produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide at scale in about a decade. Capturing and selling the carbon dioxide – because much more of this gas is made during the process – will help make the production economically competitive. In the longer-term, the university team’s work could provide a third pathway, for countries such as Aotearoa with large forestry sectors. But hydrogen facilities must build additional renewable generation, such as wind farms, or risk increasing the amount of coal and gas burned to create power. The Ballance Agrinutrients factory is running a small pilot to make hydrogen via electrolysis, then fertiliser. In 2019, domestic chemical production from natural gas released 1.8 million tonnes of greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere.Īt the moment, the lowest-carbon way to make hydrogen is by using electricity to split water. Industry already manufactures plenty of hydrogen gas to create chemicals including methanol and fertiliser – though this is typically from natural gas. It’s expected to replace fossil fuels in the production of lower-carbon steel as well as powering off-road vehicles. It can be burnt or chemically combined with oxygen, to release energy and water. Hydrogen gas is a promising zero-carbon fuel. “For commercial production, we’ll need to increase the scale by 100 times – not the physical size, but the capacity.” The machine is currently as large as a two-storey building, Pang added. For every kilogram of wood, the process extracts about 70 grams of hydrogen.īut at the moment, this takes a long time, Pang said. Water molecules have two atoms of hydrogen, so by adding steam to the mix, the team is able to extract more hydrogen than is just contained within the wood. These make the process more effective, “unlocking” the potential of the wood matter, he said. To boost the creation and separation of the gases, Yip spent 10 years developing special materials, known as catalysts. Then, steam is added and the process converts, purifies and separates this gas mixture into hydrogen in one chamber and carbon dioxide in another. The researchers see this material as an opportunity to create two products: climate-friendly hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide.įirst, wood is chemically processed in a large machine – developed at Canterbury University over 15 years – to create a mixture of gases, including hydrogen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane.

Researchers want to transform it into green gas. All rights reserved.The forestry sector produces roughly 3 million tonnes of woody residue. The aim of the paper is to gather and critically assess the state of a research and experience from laboratory, pilot and operational applications of carbon dioxide bioconversion and highlight further perspective fields of research.īioconversion of carbon dioxide Biogas upgrading Biomethane Hydrogenotrophic methanogens Renewable natural gas.Ĭopyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. National Center for Biotechnology Information. There are many studies with different bioreactors arrangements and a way of enrichment of hydrogenotrophic methanogens, but the system still has to be optimized for a higher efficiency. Hydrogen sulfide H2S CID 402 - structure, chemical names, physical and chemical properties, classification, patents, literature, biological activities, safety/hazards/toxicity information, supplier lists, and more. The major bottleneck in the process is gas-liquid mass transfer of H 2 and the method of the effective input of hydrogen into the system. Biomethanization of CO 2 can take place directly in anaerobic digesters fed with organic substrates or in separate bioreactors. The possibility of subsequent repowering of the energy of hydrogen to the easily utilizable and transportable form is a biological conversion with CO 2 to biomethane. Discontinuous electricity production from wind and solar energy combined with fluctuating utilization cause serious storage problems that can be solved by power-to-gas strategy representing the production of storable hydrogen via the electrolysis of water. Reducing equivalents to the biotransformation of carbon dioxide from biogas or other resources to biomethane can be supplied by external hydrogen. The biological conversion of CO 2 and hydrogen to methane is well known reaction without the demand of high pressure and temperature and is carried out by hydrogenotrophic methanogens. The exploitation of whole biogas energy is locally limited and utilization of the natural gas transport system requires CO 2 removal or its conversion to methane. Biogas produced from organic wastes contains energetically usable methane and unavoidable amount of carbon dioxide.

Hydrogen dioxide