Since the idea of hydrogen becoming the fuel of the future was introduced, the emphasis has been on “green hydrogen,” which is produced from electricity generated from renewable resources, and “blue hydrogen’ which is made from natural gas but with carbon capture and storage. But there is a new player in the market that has people talking and which might soon alter the hydrogen picture – “turquoise hydrogen.”
What is Turquoise Hydrogen?
Turquoise hydrogen, on the other hand, is a new fuel developed from methane pyrolysis, which involves exposing natural gas, which is mainly methane, to high temperatures to produce hydrogen gas and carbon. It has no carbon dioxide emission, which makes it a zero-emission technique.
Hydrogen is the “turquoise” part; the solid carbon byproduct has other uses, including in construction materials, inks, and steel. This solid form is much more convenient to store and transport than gaseous emissions, which are costly to capture and store in the form of carbon.
A Vehicle with the Advantages of Both Worlds
Turquoise hydrogen is getting so much interest because it is attempting to combine some of the desirable characteristics of green and blue hydrogen in one step.
Like green hydrogen produced by means of electrolysis, turquoise hydrogen also does not emit carbon. Nevertheless, it has to be noted that electrolysis requires substantial amounts of electricity and often uses fossil energy sources. At the same time, methane pyrolysis is a very efficient process that uses much less energy.
Like blue hydrogen, turquoise hydrogen also has a similar problem, and that is the input of natural gas. However, it does not use the costly and complex carbon capture step that is required to make blue hydrogen from the steam methane reforming process.
An Affordable and Easily Expandable System
The first one is that turquoise hydrogen can be substantially cheaper than other types of hydrogen when it is produced at scale. Feedstock is available in abundance in the United States because natural gas is easily available in the country.
In addition to the low feedstock costs, the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act offers tax credits of up to $3 per kg for carbon-free hydrogen production. Include the revenue generated from the sales of the solid carbon byproduct and the total cost of production in some regions, which may turn out to be negative.
This low-cost production, along with the flexibility of using the existing natural gas infrastructure, makes turquoise hydrogen a very suitable solution. It can be synthesized on an industrial scale at factories and power stations and even in houses supplied with gas pipelines without the complications of transportation and storage.
Challenges and Remaining Questions
Although the turquoise hydrogen prospects are quite optimistic, there are still some issues and questions that have to be solved.
It is still in the developmental stage, and a few firms, such as C-Zero based in California, are in the process of constructing pilot plants to use this methane pyrolysis technique. Suppose the company scales up the process while at the same time ensuring that the process is still as efficient as possible and that extreme temperatures are effectively dealt with. In that case, this will be an engineering challenge.
The solid carbon byproduct has to generate enough demand across industries to make business sense and not turn into an issue of disposal.
Hydrogen will still need natural gas to produce as a feedstock and, possibly, renewable natural gas in the future. ‘Fully renewable turquoise hydrogen is probably still about 20-30 years away’.
Thus, there will be a need for the public to accept the use of natural gas infrastructure for hydrogen to occur in the market.
However, it seems that turquoise hydrogen has potential as a fuel that is sustainable, cheap, and built into the current systems. The gurus are sitting up and taking notice, and this dark horse hydrogen could be a dark horse no more before long.