Stanford researchers boost clean hydrogen production with methane pyrolysis, cutting CO2 emissions and producing graphite byproduct

Stanford engineers have developed an improved methane pyrolysis process that breaks methane into hydrogen and solid carbon instead of CO2. The method uses internal heating to achieve a roughly tenfold efficiency gain over conventional external heating. The solid carbon byproduct is high-quality graphite, potentially useful for batteries and electrodes, though not yet pure enough for demanding applications. The team aims to scale up and verify the process for mainstream hydrogen production.