Modern Hydrogen (also known as Modern Electron), an American cleantech startup founded in 2015, develops methane pyrolysis technology that converts natural gas to clean hydrogen and carbon black. The company's technology is designed to be smaller, modular, and intended for decentralized applications, meaning the hydrogen gas won't have to be shipped or piped to new locations.
Challenges: carbon emissions
Natural gas is a commonly used fossil fuel for heating homes and buildings, but its use can have significant environmental impacts. When natural gas is burned to generate heat, carbon dioxide (COâ‚‚) is released into the atmosphere, contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. In addition to COâ‚‚, natural gas combustion also produces other greenhouse gasses such as methane (CHâ‚„), which is even more potent than COâ‚‚ in terms of its warming potential. As such, while natural gas is a relatively clean-burning fossil fuel compared to coal and oil, its use still contributes to the overall carbon footprint of households and the environment.
Hydrogen (H₂) is the holy grail of clean fuels that produce energy and water as a by-product. It is a carbon-free substitute for fossil fuels. Hydrogen as a fuel can decarbonize many areas of our economy that renewable electrification cannot yet reach. However, hydrogen is difficult  to transport and distribute.
Currently, the majority of hydrogen is produced by large scale industrial reactors. Hydrogen must travel a great distance to reach its users. We cannot deliver hydrogen through the existing natural gas pipelines because hydrogen can embrittle many components of the normal gas pipelines. The replacement of all existing natural gas pipelines with new hydrogen-compatible pipelines may be prohibitively expensive.
Hydrogen transportation involves either pressurizing the hydrogen gas above 300 pounds per square inch gage (psig) or cryogenically cooling the hydrogen gas to -253 ºC to create liquid hydrogen. The International Energy Agency estimates that the costs of hydrogen transportation could be three times that of its production.
Modern Hydrogen Technology
Modern Hydrogen develops on-site natural gas decarbonization technology that produces clean hydrogen and separable carbon without emitting CO₂. By using the combustion heat from on-site produced hydrogen, Modern Hydrogen’s technology of combined heat and power device generates electricity and transfers waste heat to a heating system to provide hot water or steam to residential buildings. As depicted in the diagram below, the operation of the system emits no CO₂ while delivering heat and electricity to residential buildings.
Modern Hydrogen reactor
Modern Hydrogen develops several natural gas pyrolysis reactor systems that can produce clean hydrogen or hot flue gas for power generators and heating systems. The schematic diagram below depicts a molten media reactor system that converts natural gas into hydrogen and separable carbon in a high temperature molten media (such as potassium chloride).