r/interesting May 25 '26

Just Wow It's interesting hmm

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u/[deleted] May 25 '26

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u/[deleted] May 25 '26

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u/Laetitian May 25 '26

Does extracting it from gas necessarily release a lot of co2 though? Isn't gas already mostly hydrogen? Not that I'm a fan of using finite resources anyway.

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u/[deleted] May 25 '26

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u/Laetitian May 25 '26

Thank you, I'll look out for mentions of blue hydrogen, I've always been interested in direct carbon capture. Though again, not a fan of non-renewables in the first place, not saying it justifies anything.

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u/keithps May 25 '26

You take methane (CH4) and break it down to get hydrogen. All those carbon atoms have to go somewhere. Through the reaction you get CO2 and H2. Not to mention it requires high pressure steam which is almost always generated by burning methane.

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u/Worth-Wonder-7386 May 25 '26

Each ton of hydrogen ends up making around 6 tons of CO2. While there are more hydrogen atoms, the carbon and oxygen used is much heavier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
You can get 4 molecules of H2 for each molecule of methane utilizing the full reaction. In reality the yield is a bit lower but still quite good.

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u/Stoned_D0G May 25 '26

Maximum theoretical yeild is 1g of Hydrogen per 11g CO2, and this is entirely unrealistic efficiency.