Direct 2D cement-nanoadditive deposition enabling carbon-neutral hydrogen from natural gas

Abstract

Currently, hydrogen is mainly produced by conversion from natural gas via steam methane reforming (SMR), generating massive amounts of CO2. Here, we present a novel production scheme that can neutralize the CO2 from natural gas-based hydrogen productions by direct deposition of 2-dimensional carbon as cement-nanoadditive. Our tests demonstrated that cement-compatible particles can be used effectively as substrates to grow carbon nanosheets. Our analysis showed that the scheme, bridging hydrogen and cement industries, translates a ~268.7 tons cement reduction per ton of produced hydrogen with > 99% reduction of carbon nanosheets costs. Correspondingly, 375.5 Mt CO2 generated from the current SMR-based hydrogen production in the USA, China, and Australia could be neutralized by adopting this approach. We showed that combining CO2 capture in SMR and 5% replacement by our scheme can produce carbon-neutral hydrogen to meet the predicted global demand in 2045.