Recently, there has also been significant interest in thermal decomposition of methane to elemental carbon and hydrogen. This approach requires much less energy than water electrolysis, and could be CO2 neutral if there are no methane leaks and the produced carbon is utilized in applications where it is not finally released to the atmosphere. This is an interesting approach as it could solve the problem of countries having huge natural gas reserves to be tempted to extract and burn the methane for energy. Sustainability of the approach is slightly questionable, but conversion of methane to hydrogen and long lasting carbon products would be much better option than burning of methane for energy. Electrochemistry could offer alternative approaches to produce hydrogen from natural gas. Interestingly, electrocatalytic hydrocarbon oxidation has not received much attention, so we will focus on investigating if electrochemical approach could be an option for pyrolysis.

2024

2028