Mitsubishi Heavy tech makes hydrogen from natural gas without emitting CO2

illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day, reviewed by our editorial team. Read the full piece on Nikkei Asia or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has developed a system producing hydrogen from natural gas without releasing CO2, trapping the carbon in solid form for storage or other uses
• The company intends to market it to power utilities alongside its gas turbines, and will test co-firing of natural gas and hydrogen at its Takasago works

🔭 The context: The process is methane pyrolysis, producing what MHI calls turquoise hydrogen by splitting methane into hydrogen and solid carbon rather than hydrogen and CO2
• Takasago Hydrogen Park has run since 2023 as an integrated facility covering production, storage and combustion, testing both co-firing and full hydrogen firing on large JAC-series and smaller H-25 turbines.

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: Conventional hydrogen from natural gas emits CO2 that must then be captured and stored
• Pyrolysis avoids the emission and yields solid carbon, which is easier to handle and can be sold rather than sequestered
• The climate benefit still depends on upstream methane leakage and on the energy powering the process, neither of which the accessible text addresses

⏭️ What's next: Methane pyrolysis is moving from startups toward industrial scale
• ExxonMobil and BASF announced in November 2025 that they would co-develop thermal pyrolysis with a demonstration plant in Baytown, Texas
• Hazer Group allied with KBR in May 2025 to commercialise its process

💬 One quote: Monolith Materials has "solved the century-old problem of scaling methane pyrolysis to a commercial level" — Yoshihiro Shiraiwa, president and CEO, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America (November 2020)

📈 One stat: Methane pyrolysis yields roughly 3 kg of solid carbon for every 1 kg of hydrogen, making carbon sales a commercial necessity rather than a bonus at scale.

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