Advanced Hydrogen Production through Methane Cracking: A Review

Hydrogen is widely produced and used for our day-to-day needs. It has also the potential to be used as fuel for industry or can be used as an energy carrier for stationary power. Hydrogen can be produced by different processes like from fossil fuels (Steam methane reforming, coal gasification, cracking of natural gas); renewable resources (electrolysis, wind, etc.); nuclear energy (thermochemical water splitting). In this paper, few processes have been discussed briefly. Cracking of methane has been given special emphasis in this review for production of hydrogen. There are mainly two types of cracking, non-catalytic and catalytic. Catalytic cracking of methane is governed mainly by finding a suitable catalyst; its generation, deactivation, activation and filament formation for the adsorption of carbon particles (deposited on metal surface); study of metallic support which helps in finding active sites of the catalyst for the reaction to proceed easily. Non-catalytic cracking of methane is mainly based on thermal cracking. Moreover, several thermal cracking processes with their reactor configurations have been discussed.