Hydrogen is considered as one of the potential molecules to help fighting climate change by reducing CO2 emissions in many industrial applications. Nevertheless, if we want hydrogen to play its role as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, it is necessary that its production emissions and its production cost stay as low as possible. Nowadays, the most mature technologies for hydrogen production are steam methane reforming (called SMR) and water electrolysis. The first, SMR, has been used at industrial scale to produce hydrogen for over a century and has the benefits of having a low production cost less than one euro per kilogram of hydrogen. Its major drawback is its high CO2 emissions which exceed 10 kilogram of CO2 per kilogram of hydrogen. The second, electrolysis, is a clean alternative but has high electricity consumption and therefore has a high production cost that may exceed 6 euros per kilogram of hydrogen.
The HyPlasma project has as objective to help enabling the clean hydrogen economy to emerge by producing at the same time a clean and cost-effective hydrogen. In fact, the HyPlasma process uses high electrified heat produced via plasma technology to crack methane molecules into gaseous hydrogen and solid carbon powder. The advantage of HyPlasma is that it has no direct CO2 emissions like electrolysis and consumes 3 to 4 times less electricity than electrolysis which leads to a production cost that is in average 50 percent lower than that of electrolysis (around 3 euros per kilogram of hydrogen). In addition, the HyPlasma process helps sequestrating the carbon in a commercially valuable products like carbon black a precious commodity for tyre industries.
