Technological challenges for industrial development of hydrogen production based on methane cracking

The world energy demand is foreseen to increase due to the improvements of the living standard in the developing countries and to the development of the global economy. The increase in sustainability of the energy supply must be considered as a must to avoid spoiling the natural resources, whose availability will be crucial for next generations. The CO2-free utilization of available energy sources is one of the ways to attain such objectives. Innovative solutions should be put into practice for the CO2-free exploitation of the huge fossil fuel resources already available. In this paper we explore the possibility to enlarge the fossil fuel availability without CO2 emissions by the analysis of the technological options to obtain Hydrogen as energy carrier from hydrocarbon decarburation, mainly methane. A brief analysis of those options and a discussion about their state-of-the-art will be done, to establish their potential and the R&D required to assess their practical implementation in a medium term. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.