COMMERCIAL SCALE PYROLYSIS

There are several technologies that have proven successful in laboratories or pilot projects. A handful of companies are building commercial-scale plants. The information on the following companies and technologies was believed current at the time this webpage was written. Please do additional research for more current information.

Some of these technologies and companies are:

Plasma-arc Pyrolysis

High Temperature Technologies Corp. uses a plasma arc torch incorporating gas or steam and metal electrodes (copper, tungsten, hafnium, zirconium, etc.) to create plasma, which is an ionized gas. The temperature of the plasma torch can be in the range 3 000-6 000℃; at these temperatures molecular bonds break down through a process called molecular dissociation, to create basic elements of materials ‐ atoms.

Monolith Materials′ first plant in Hallum, Nebraska is expected to be fully on-line in 2021. The company has announced construction of its second plant which is being supported by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Ørsted, a leading offshore wind developer, and Yara, the world′s leading fertilizer company, have joined forces in hopes of developing renewable hydrogen for the production of ammonia. If the required public co-funding is secured and the right regulatory framework is in place, the project could be operational in 2024/2025.

2-step Catalyst Bed

Hazer Group Limited is building a production facility in Munster, Western Australia, that will use its proprietary low-emission hydrogen and graphite production process. The process enables the conversion of natural gas and similar feedstocks into hydrogen and high quality graphite, using iron ore as a process catalyst.

Fluidized/moving bed / thermal

A consortium of Linde Group, ThyssenKrupp, and a BASF-related entity are developing a pilot plant for sustainable syngas production from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. They aim to employ Project Solid and fluid Gas Products (German: FfPaG) technology to obtain hydrogen, and then use carbon dioxide as a raw material. The project has run into some technical issues.

Liquid metal or salt bubbler

C-Zero, a start-up with backing from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, PG & E, SoCal Gas, and Breakthrough Energy (a consortium created by Bill Gates) are bubbling methane gas through liquid salt to separate the hydrogen and carbon atoms. They aim to build a large scale commercial plant soon.

Microwave

Atlantic Hydrogen Inc. developed its proprietary CarbonSaver technology to direct 100KW microwaves at its reactors, ionizing the methane into carbon and hydrogen. Unfortunately, just as the company was about to build a large-scale plant, a key piece of government funding was withdrawn and the plant was never built.

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