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Dedicated hydrogen infrastructure can take two forms. The first is new infrastructure, such as pure hydrogen pipelines from hydrogen hubs to industrial customers. There are other projects in the work that minimize how much new infrastructure is needed, while maximizing the utility of existing infrastructure. One company working in this space is Modern Hydrogen, which uses a process called pyrolysis to convert natural gas into hydrogen at the point of use. The value proposition is summed up well by a quote from Tony Pan, CEO and Co-Founder of Modern Hydrogen: “Our biggest value is speed of decarbonization, because we can skip infrastructure changes. Instead of changing all their pipes to become compatible with pure hydrogen, utilities can add our box at the end of the pipe, and the box strips out the carbon (C) as a solid out from the natural gas (CH4) molecules, leaving only clean hydrogen (H) for the end user. Then we sell and permanently sequester that solid carbon in roads.” The proposition that the easiest way to transport hydrogen is to simply transport natural gas instead is an intriguing one. Lindsey Motlow, a Senior Research Associate and Physicist on the Sustainability and Energy Transition team with Darcy Partners, effectively summarizes many of the potential advantages of this approach and the progress being made on implementing it. “The Preliminary Acceptance test and implementation of Modern Hydrogen’s methane pyrolysis technology with Northwest Natural represents a pioneering milestone with distributed pyrolysis technology directly integrating with an operating gas system. Methane pyrolysis produces what is known as “turquoise” hydrogen; it is a hydrogen production pathway with the potential of low-to-negative carbon intensity. This hydrogen production method takes advantage of existing asset bases and workforces by use of hydrocarbon feedstock. Given the engineering and cost hurdles associated with large scale hydrogen production, storage, and transport, the commercial maturation of distributed “turquoise” hydrogen presents a compelling solution for on-site decarbonization, especially to customers connected to existing natural gas infrastructure.”

The hydrogen heating startup, which rebranded from Modern Electron in May, plans to complete the move to its new HQ location during the first quarter of 2024.

Turquoise hydrogen also comes from natural gas. But this H2 is split from methane’s carbon atoms in a different way. It’s known as pyrolysis. Here, high heat breaks down methane into H2 and solid carbon. The solid carbon would not go into the air. So it would not add to global warming. And the carbon could be used for other things, like making tires or parking lots. Pyrolysis can be done in an industrial setting as natural gas comes into a facility. So it wouldn’t need new pipelines, says Mack Hopen. He’s at Modern Hydrogen in Bothell, Wash. There, he works to get turquoise hydrogen into commercial markets. However, there would still be some methane leaks from getting methane to an industrial plant. And the process still is costly. But some say the technology could act as a bridge from fossil fuels to a H2 economy. A team at the Max Planck Institute in Mülheim, Germany, shared that view in 2021.

A Washington company says it has developed a way to capture carbon from natural gas and use it to make asphalt to build roads. Modern Hydrogen uses a process called methane pyrolysis that produces clean hydrogen out of methane and captures the carbon from that gas before it reaches the atmosphere. Methane, which is four parts hydrogen and one part carbon, is the largest component of natural gas. The captured carbon is a solid carbon byproduct called “carbon black” that can be used as binder in hot-mix asphalt, cold patch and asphalt sealers, the company says. The carbon-captured asphalt has already been used for sealing an asphalt parking lot in Portland, Oregon, and for paving a driveway with hot-mix asphalt in Seattle (see the video at the end of this story). The product has also been used in private parking lots and driveways in California, New Mexico, Florida and in Alberta, Canada, the company says. Road Recyclers, an Austin, Texas-based designer of asphalt binders for the road recycling industry, has signed on to be “the first to incorporate carbon stripped from natural gas in public roads,” according to Modern Hydrogen. Road Recyclers has been testing Modern Hydrogen products and says it is now ready to begin field trials with partner municipal and state transportation agencies.

“Modern Hydrogen is thrilled to see a broad collection of hub approaches, regions, and companies, including ourselves, be selected by the Department of Energy to continue building out the hydrogen hubs,” said Mack Hopen, commercialization manager at Modern Hydrogen. “The Hubs are a crucial first stage of development for the hydrogen economy, and this investment by the Energy Department will help make that happen,” he added. “As these plans become reality, we are excited to be able to put our mission into practice — making energy cleaner and cheaper. But, the Hub model is not the end-all-be-all solution. The majority of prospective hydrogen users are located outside these geographic areas, and our distributed pyrolysis approach will ensure that they can still get affordable, clean hydrogen without being located at or near one of these Hubs.” The company uses methane pyrolysis to decarbonize natural gas, which is abundant and cheap in the United States. That process splits the hydrogen and the carbon. In other words, natural gas is 80% hydrogen, and the focus is on removing the one pesky carbon atom. The technology heats natural gas to 1,000 degrees Celsius without oxygen. That allows Modern Hydrogen to crack the natural gas and decarbonize it, thus isolating the carbon atom — not burning it and sending it to the atmosphere. That avoids 10 gigatons of CO2 yearly. Public and private enterprises have invested millions of dollars in this technology, which former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz applauds. It’s called turquoise hydrogen because it mixes blue and green. Blue hydrogen occurs when the carbon is captured and buried, and green hydrogen refers to using wind or solar power to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The primary focus is on producing clean hydrogen for the hard-to-decarbonize industries or things that cannot quickly electrify. That applies to planes, trains, ships, and long-haul trucks. Electric generators can also run on a blend of hydrogen and natural gas.

The administration is funding several different hydrogen production technologies, an approach backed by Tony Pan, co-founder of the methane pyrolysis start-up Modern Hydrogen. “So far, the government deserves a big kudos for how they’re supporting clean hydrogen. Instead of picking winners and losers directly, most of the incentives are technology agnostic,” Pan says. Some hubs will use water electrolysis powered by renewable or nuclear energy, some will upgrade biomass or waste into hydrogen, and some will pair fossil fuel-derived hydrogen production with carbon capture.

Tony Pan came to the United States from Taiwan in 2004 to study physics at Stanford University before getting his Ph.D. in the same subject area from Harvard University. Now, the 37-year-old is the chief executive of Washington State-based Modern Hydrogen, making energy cleaner and cheaper with a formula endorsed by a former U.S. energy secretary and Microsoft Founder Bill Gates. We’ll get into that in a moment. But utilities have invested in and bought the technology — a potentially humongous market in the pilot phase. The chief executive says it will go commercial in 2025 and gradually scale up. “Right now, it is like Tesla in 2008,” CEO Pan told me in a virtual interview. “Utilities are the target audience, which serve millions of customers — residential and business. They have pressure to reduce carbon emissions. Otherwise, they could do nothing. They want to switch to hydrogen because it burns cleanly. It is about decarbonization — quickly and at scale.”

A Bothell-based company, Modern Hydrogen, is on the leading edge of finding a cost-effective way to turn natural gas emissions into clean-burning hydrogen. Modern Hydrogen said they have engineered a way to take carbon out of natural gas in order to create decarbonized gas, which releases significantly less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when burned. Company co-founder Tony Pan explained removing the carbon from the fuel itself is a lot easier than trying to capture the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The captured carbon is also a lot more useful than the carbon dioxide, which is mainly just injected into the ground to be sequestered away.

In this episode of Hardware to Save a Planet, Max Mankin, CTO and Co-founder of Modern [Hydrogen], and Mothusi Pahl, Vice President of Business Development at Modern [Hydrogen], join Dylan Garrett to discuss an innovative technology that decarbonizes natural gas use by converting gas to clean hydrogen at the point of use without CO2 emissions. Modern [Hydrogen] is a cleantech company focused on heat and hydrogen. Its first solution decarbonizes gas use by converting customers’ gas to clean hydrogen onsite without CO2 emissions. Its second solution provides efficiency by transforming heat into power, saving money, reducing carbon footprint, and providing resiliency in blackouts.

In this captivating episode of the Dealmakers’ Podcast, we embark on an extraordinary voyage with Tony Pan, a visionary entrepreneur determined to combat climate change through groundbreaking technology. From his early days growing up as the son of a Taiwan Navy officer to founding Modern Hydrogen, Tony’s journey has been nothing short of inspiring.

Modern Hydrogen strips carbon from natural gas, preventing those molecules from becoming carbon dioxide. Called “pre-combustion carbon capture,” this technology can be paired with existing gas networks to decarbonize them at stages upstream during gas transmissions, at utility gate stations, or directly at an operator’s point of use. The full article is published in Gas Technology Magazine 2023

Natural gas and air are producing hydrogen in a NW Natural pilot.