Hycamite’s technology breaks down large amounts of methane into its components – hydrogen and carbon – without releasing any greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It uses just 13% of the energy needed to produce hydrogen through electrolysis
‘Turquoise’ hydrogen offers huge environmental benefits and Finnish inventors of the new process Hycamite has revealed this week it has started construction of a new proving facility targeted to produce 2,000 tonnes of the gas in its first year.
It is being built at the Kokkola Industrial Park (KIP), which is Northern Europe’s largest ‘ecosystem of inorganic chemical industry’. A growing list of leaders in the chemical and metal processing industries operate there. There are 16 industrial/manufacturing companies and more than 60 service companies employing 2,400 people directly.
Turquoise hydrogen is made using a process called methane pyrolysis to produce hydrogen and solid carbon. Turquoise hydrogen will be valued as a low-emission hydrogen when the thermal process is powered with renewable energy, says the company.
Pure hydrogen can be used either as an industrial raw material or as a fuel. Hycamite’s carbon products are suitable, for example, as a raw material for batteries and can replace the graphite currently imported from China. The company’s technology requires only 13 percent of the energy needed to produce hydrogen through electrolysis. The use of methane obtained from natural gas and biomethane as a raw material enables a rapid increase in production.
The purpose of Hycamite’s new hydrogen facility is to demonstrate the profitability of the technology developed by the company. Hycamite’s technology breaks down large amounts of methane into its components – hydrogen and carbon – without releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The nominal capacity of the new facility will be 2,000 tons of hydrogen and 6,000 tons of carbon products per year.
This process heats natural gas in the absence of air, inside a pyrolysis oven, which results in the formation of hydrogen and solid carbon, rather than CO2. The resulting powder form of solid carbon, known as carbon black, is a key ingredient in many products, including tyres and dark plastics, and can be sold as another revenue stream, although prices in Europe currently sit below $2/kg.
The new facility is able to prevent up to 18,000 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere every year, when liquefied natural gas (LNG) is used as the source of methane to be processed. When, for example, biomethane obtained from farms is used as a raw material, it is possible to gain time for a carbon sink, i.e. carbon can even be removed from the atmospheric cycle.
The liquefied natural gas used in Hycamite’s new plant is delivered from Norway via the Kokkola LNG terminal, and biomethane from Finland.
The new hydrogen production facility will be built near Hycamite’s headquarters and a small test facility. KIP is Northern Europe’s largest ecosystem of the inorganic chemical industry, where several leading companies in the chemical and metal refining industry operate.
Pure hydrogen can be used either as an industrial raw material or as a fuel. Hycamite’s carbon products are suitable, for example, as a raw material for batteries and can replace the graphite currently imported from China. The company’s technology requires only 13 percent of the energy needed to produce hydrogen through electrolysis. The use of methane obtained from natural gas and biomethane as a raw material enables a rapid increase in production.
Hycamite produces clean hydrogen and industrial-quality solid carbon by splitting methane using proprietary zero-emission technology. It is based on the thermo-catalytic decomposition (TCD) of methane molecules. In other words, we break the methane with our catalyst and heat —using only 13% of the energy required for electrolysis and with zero emissions.
