How to give a renewed chance to natural gas as feed for the production of hydrogen: Electric MSR coupled with CO2 mineralization

Abstract

Recent years have seen a growing interest in water electrolysis as a way to store renewable electric energy into chemical energy, through hydrogen production. However today the share of renewable energy is still limited and there is the need to have a continuous use of H2 for industrial chemicals applications. Firstly the paper discusses the use of electrolysis - connected to a conventional grid - for a continuous H2 production in terms of associated CO2 emissions and compares such emissions with conventional methane steam reforming (MSR). Therefore, it explores the possibility to use electrical methane steam reforming (eMSR) as a way to reduce the CO2 emissions. As a way to have zero emissions, carbon mineralization of CO2 is coupled - instead of in-situ carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) - to eMSR; associated relevant cost of production is evaluated for different scenarios. It appears that to minimize such production cost, carbonate minerals must be reused in the making of other industrial products, since the amount of carbonates generated by the process is quite significant.