Clean Hydrogen at a Crossroads: Why Methane Pyrolysis Deserves Attention

Re:Clean Hydrogen at a Crossroads: Why Methane Pyrolysis Des... by toast0 on Friday September 26, 2025 @07:45PM (#45392178)

It's a great move! Methane economy already exists. Methane storage and transport is reasonably simple and scalable.

Convert to hydrogen at point of use, and you can claim all the hydrogen hype without having to do all the hard things with hydrogen. If you accidentally oxidize methane instead of converting to hydrogen and oxidizing hydrogen, whoopsie-doodles, but it might be a simpler system.

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Re:Clean Hydrogen at a Crossroads: Why Methane Pyrolysis Des... by jvanderbot on Saturday September 27, 2025 @09:38AM (#45395616)

Sure, but how is methane obtained if not from a byproduct of drilling up oil? Isn't it the "gas" in oil&gas?

It's probably a good move to "hydrogenize" the economy if we can, but it sure would be nice to move away from extraction into something that's more sustainably produced in-situ. Either electricity, or even methane synthesis.

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Re:Clean Hydrogen at a Crossroads: Why Methane Pyrolysis Des... by rini17 on Saturday September 27, 2025 @06:04PM (#45399721)

We will always need some oil in near future. And gas is considered a byproduct only because oil is more economically attractive. It is technically perfectly feasible to obtain gas only and leave oil in the ground.

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