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– KIT and Wintershall Dea begin joint work on climate-friendly industrial scale methane pyrolysis
Courtesy KIT: Pyrolysis of methane will make it possible to use climate-friendly fossil natural gas in the future: methane will be divided into gaseous hydrogen and solid carbon, which is a valuable raw material for many industries and can also be safely stored. This can be an important element for a future climate neutral energy supply. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a particularly efficient process for this purpose. Together with industrial partner Wintershall Dea, it is now being developed for industrial scale use.
In the energy debate, hydrogen is increasingly considered the key to the success of the energy transition. Experts from the International Energy Agency IEA calculated that even a 20% hydrogen mixture in the European gas network will reduce CO2 emissions by 60 million tonnes per year. It is the same as Denmark issues in a whole year. “Direct thermal cracking of methane and other hydrocarbons provides a way to produce hydrogen from natural gas – without direct CO 2,” explains Professor Thomas Wetzel of the KIT Process Engineering Institute. Her research group at KIT developed it in conjunction with the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies and. V. in Potsdam, a method in which methane is continuously decomposed into its components in a bubble column reactor filled with liquid metal: hydrogen and solid carbon. Carbon can be safely stored as a pure substance in solid form and used in many industrial areas. In turn, hydrogen can be used as a clean source of energy in the electricity, heating and mobility sectors or in industrial processes, for example in steel production.
Research Cooperation with Wintershall Dea
In a joint project, initially scheduled to last three years, KIT and its industrial partner Wintershall Dea now want to lay the groundwork for the future industrial use of methane pyrolysis over the next three years. “There are large amounts of natural gas around the world and there is a possibility of using this natural gas in a climate-neutral manner. How we implement this technically efficient and later we can also use it for large volumes of gas: that’s what we want to investigate in our research project, “says Wetzel. “We look forward to working together and are convinced that together we can make an important contribution to a sustainable energy supply,” said Hugo Dijkgraaf, board member and chief technology officer at Wintershall Dea: “The prospects we have in our cooperation with the KIT establish, show: Natural gas may be the future Natural gas is already the cleanest conventional energy source today But natural gas can become even more climate-friendly in the future: using CODivida 2 and get hydrogen from gas Natural “.
Award-winning methane pyrolysis research
Research from the KIT and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Sustainability e. V. for methane pyrolysis received the German Gas Industry Innovation Award in 2018 and also won the Public Prize at the Future Workshop ERDGAS 2018, organized by the Zukunft ERDGAS branch initiative. “At the Future Workshop and the German Gas Industry Innovation Award, forward-looking gas technologies receive an internship,” says Dr. Ing. Timm Kehler, CEO of the Zukunft ERDGAS Industry Initiative. He welcomes the fact that KIT and Wintershall Dea are starting a joint project to commercialize decarbonised natural gas: “We need green gas and these future partnerships to quickly tackle the challenges of climate change,” says Kehler. Zukunft ERDGAS, along with other industry associations, also sponsors the Innovation Award. Both events arenatural gas supported by Wintershall Dea.
About Wintershall Dea
With the merger of Wintershall Holding GmbH and DEA Deutsche Erdoel AG, two successful companies with a long tradition form Europe’s leading independent natural gas and oil company: Wintershall Dea. The German-based company based in Kassel and Hamburg seeks and promotes gas and oil in 13 countries around the world efficiently and responsibly. With activities in Europe, Russia, Latin America and the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), Wintershall Dea has a global upstream portfolio and is also involved in midstream businesses with natural gas transportation interests.
Wintershall Dea has over 120 years of operating experience as operator and project partner throughout the E&P value chain. The company employs about 4,000 people from over 60 countries around the world. Average daily production in 2018 of about 590,000 barrels of oil equivalent will increase the company by 2023 to about 750,000 barrels.
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