Indian Scientists Designs ‘Hybrid Material’ To Absorb Greenhouse Gas ‘Methane’ & Convert Into Clean Hydrogen
Nearly 640 million tons of methane was emitted into the atmosphere in 2021 by humanly activities. 36 billion tons of CO2 was emitted during the same year.
Hyderabad: A group of researchers from the Indian Institute of Chemical Tchnology (IICT), Hyderabad have computationally developed a ‘hybrid material’ which can absorb the greenhouse gas ‘methane’ and can convert it into ‘clean hydrogen.’
The team has successfully designed the ‘hybrid material’ which can also simulate a process pf capturing carbon dioxide in-situ and can successfully convert it into high purity hydrogen from non-fuel grade bioethanol.
The team has also designed a functional testing and research facility to test the material and perform further carbon capturing research. The new facility is a dual operational fixed cum fluidized bed reactor system (FBR). The system can perform the advance steam methane reforming (SESMR) for high purity Hydrogen production based on the modeling and preliminary experimental studies.
The Ministry of Science & Technology in a statement said, “Given the global warming potential of greenhouse gases, scientists are trying to explore innovative methods of absorbing these gases and converting them to useful substances.”
The ministry further added, “”It is unique and available for the first time in the country to test the performance of dual-functional materials for SESMR in the fluidized bed reactor system. SESMR offers specific advantages of in-situ CO2 removal through sorbents and thereby overcomes the equilibrium limitations of steam reforming and leads to high purity H2 production.”
Currently the team is synthesizing the dual functional materials identified from theoretical predictions while also optimizing existing sorbent/catalyst materials to cope up with the rising challenges of carbon capture and utilization and associated research.
According to the global data, nearly 640 million tons of methane was emitted into the atmosphere in 2021 by humanly activities. 36 billion tons of CO2 was emitted during the same year.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to sustain the habitable levels of global temperature gas emissions.