Articles & Media

Can we sequester carbon under our wheels?

Modern Hydrogen deploys “pre-combustion carbon capture” technology to remove carbon from natural gas – while producing hydrogen for clean energy use – then buries that carbon in asphalt for paving roads, runways, and parking lots.

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.” 

Modern Hydrogen is one of three finalists for this year’s David & Patricia Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur Award:

We profiled First Mode last week, and looked at Group14 the other day. Now here’s more about Modern Hydrogen: 

Modern Hydrogen calls itself a clean hydrogen company.

“We decarbonize natural gas use by converting gas to clean hydrogen at the customer’s point of use without CO2 emissions. Thus we can decarbonize the natural gas grid and accelerate use of hydrogen, without requiring trillions and decades to build out hydrogen distribution infrastructure.

Our innovative process uses gas to produce hydrogen and sequesters solid carbon at the same time. When paired with biogas, this new technique yields net negative emissions with significant environmental benefits, without the high cost of CO2 capture. We can also directly weigh the solid carbon we pull out from the biogas, and every kilogram of solid carbon we put into the ground directly translates to verifiable emissions captured and avoided.”

Natural gas is 80% hydrogen atoms. Removing the carbon at point-of-use allows for energy decarbonization with existing infrastructure. According to Forbes Magazine

“There are 3 million miles of natural gas pipelines and less than 2,000 miles of hydrogen pipelines. The natural gas lines will require “substantial modifications” to carry pure hydrogen, the U.S. Energy Department said.

However, “We don’t need any changes to the pipelines because we do the conversion of natural gas to clean hydrogen at the point-of-use,” says CEO Pan. “Thus, the hydrogen is produced locally at the customer location, and therefore no longer needs dedicated hydrogen transportation infrastructure. The utilities want to put our box near or at the end of their existing pipelines — next to the customer.”

It’s in recognition of meaningful advances in Washington-based clean energy innovation such as this, and in the spirit of our founder, that the 3rd annual David & Patricia Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur Award will be presented on Thursday January 4th at the Future of Carbon Policy Forum.

The inaugural winner was Kenworth Trucks, presented by Governor Jay Inslee. The second winner was Myno Carbon, presented by Commissioner of Public Lands, Hilary Franz.

This year’s David & Patricia Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur Award will be presented at Amazon HQ in Seattle on January 4th during the Future of Carbon Policy Forum.

The event is currently SOLD OUT. But we do have a waiting list and expect to release some additional seats by the end of the year. To add your name, enter it HERE.

EVENT SPONSORS

Special thanks to:

David and Linda Cornfield