Natural Gas "Cleaning" Extracts Valuable Waste Carbon

Al writes "There's been a lot of focus on "clean coal" lately, but a Canadian start-up called Atlantic Hydrogen is developing a way to make natural gas more environmentally friendly. The process involves using a plasma reactor to separate hydrogen and methane in the gas. The procedure also turns carbon emissions into high-purity carbon black, a substance that is used to make inks, plastics and reinforced rubber products. Utility companies could potentially sell the carbon black, making the process more financially attractive."

Comments

Better for the environment, but

[GreenTech11]

You are still going to run out of gas eventually, this just means that we don't hurt the environment as much in the process.

Re:Better for the environment, but

[Scrameustache]

You are still going to run out of gas eventually, this just means that we don't hurt the environment as much in the process.

Well, it's methane, which is produced naturally by decomposing organic matter (as a waste product of the microorganism doing the biodegradation), so the technology could be applied to renewable sources of methane even though that's probably not economically sound when competing with currently mined deposits of gas.

Re:Better for the environment, but

[LWATCDR]

But to do this with bio gas would be dumb.
Biogas is carbon neutral and removing the carbon decreases the energy content of the gas by a good amount.

Re:Better for the environment, but

[icebrain]

We have had answers in front of us for at least one, if not two decades.

Feel free to enlighten us any time, then...

I do agree that the expenditure of combustible fuels to run electric power generation is stupid. Hydrodynamic dams, tidal generators, and nuclear reactors are the way to go.

But you still need some form of combustible fuel for transportation, particularly in aviation, because the power output and energy density of hydrocarbons are unmatched for that application. They are also consumable during flight (lowering weight and extending range). I expect that aircraft will be the last to convert to emissionless power, as demand is relatively small and practical electric drive will take a long time to develop beyond light airplanes. Some form of biodiesel, however, could suffice in the near to medium term, particularly if it can be feasibly produced from waste products and if the corn lobby is kept quiet.

Re:Better for the environment, but

[redbeard]

This doesn't answer what I see as the biggest problem with BioD. Current feedstocks are almost exclusively diverting oils from food sources. So, instead of making canola for cooking, it's being turned into motor fuel.

Some promising research is being done on oil producing algae, but it's not ready for production yet.

Re:Better for the environment, but

[Firethorn]

there is a large market for carbon black

Yes, but is it sufficient to cover if ALL the power plants started doing this?

A similar thing happened with Glycerin due to biodiesel production. As a byproduct of biodiesel, it was sold at market rates, eventually shutting down the old methods of artificially making it due to the price drop.

Now they're getting to the point they don't know quite what to do with it all.

Re:Better for the environment, but

[evanbd]

All you're saying is that this method doesn't solve all the world's problems, but we already knew that. Think of it as a more environmentally friendly way of producing carbon black, that happens to clean up some uses of natural gas as a side effect, rather than the other way around. Sure, it's not a world-changing effect, but it's helpful nonetheless.

OK, and exactly WHERE does the power

[Ralph Spoilsport]

to run this little plasma doohickie come from?

Oh, that's right - fossil fuels, and a lot of coal.

Nice.

And, remember, this counts against your energy return on energy invested. How much energy does it take to do this, and then mark it against the energy produced by the natgas. And the transportation of the natgas to this machine and then to the customer. And you get hydrogen out of the deal? Great - a gas so small nothing can really hold it, and due to its physical structure always requires more energy to break its bonds and contain it than what you get from burning it.

At least you get lamp black out of the deal.

Sigh. NEXT!

RS

Re:Energy arithmetic

[evanbd]

I'm not really buying the idea that hydrogen-enriched natural gas will burn more cleanly. It will produce less CO2, true, but at the price of less energy per unit volume. And natural gas can already be burned less completely.

Combustion chemistry is best described as really weird. Different fuels have a large impact on how much nitrogen burns to nitrogen oxides, as well as how completely the fuel burns. Details of the combustion environment (mixing, combustion time, combustion temp, pressure, etc) also have a huge impact. There is plenty of evidence that adding H2 to normal hydrocarbon fuels makes them burn both more completely and with less NOx production. Oxygen-bearing fuels (eg ethanol added to gasoline) can also have similar effects. Normally adding H2 has a large enough energy cost that it isn't viable, but if this process can do it easily and efficiently, that's interesting.

Re:a plasma reactor, huh?

[evanbd]

It uses less energy and less methane than normal carbon black production. True, a lot of methane passes through the reactor, but most of it leaves in enriched form that can easily be used somewhere else. The methane *consumed* is less than a conventional carbon black production process. (The carbon black market is huge -- it's a major component of tire rubber and other industrial plastics.)