Add carbon atom to pure hydrogen

In summary, the conversation is focused on finding a way to create methane (CH4) from gaseous hydrogen in a safe and efficient manner. This is in order to utilize existing infrastructure and promote the development of clean hydrogen production. The idea is to convert hydrogen to methane for transport and then back to hydrogen for use. There is discussion about the potential risks and benefits, as well as various methods for producing methane from hydrogen and carbon.
  • #1
melch
12
0
Looking for ideas that allow me to create Methane ( CH4 ) from gaseous hydrogen. This requires bonding one carbon atom to four hydrogen atoms, which should be simple enough, but there needs to be a minimum explosive danger. I know there are appliances to go the other way, but don't have the background to add carbon. It cannot be too hard, cows do it every day.

I can deliver heat up to about 900 degrees k, but would prefer a cooler process with no oxygen or dangerous waste products at the end of the process.

The idea is to convert hydrogen, which can be available in abundance to methane to be able to use existing infrastructure to ship and use the .

The value of this is to allow (and pay for) development of affordable, clean hydrogen production so that there is an incentive to create a hydrogen infrastructure.
 
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  • #2
If you already have a hydrogen, why to convert it to methane, instead of using it directly?
 
  • #3
Borek said:
If you already have a hydrogen, why to convert it to methane, instead of using it directly?

My thoughts exactly.

Why would conversion to methane assist in Hydrogen production technology?

If you can source Hydrogen, as you put it "in abundance", why not just use it directly?
 
  • #4
jarednjames said:
My thoughts exactly.

Why would conversion to methane assist in Hydrogen production technology?

If you can source Hydrogen, as you put it "in abundance", why not just use it directly?

Simple:

Hydrogen cannot be shipped via natural gas pipelines without destroying the pipelines. Methane, the payload component of natural gas can be.

From a game theory viewpoint, you create high risk if you either build the infrastructure without building the production facilities or vice-versa and its a huge investment to build the infrastructure, meaning that there will be huge financial and political resistance and the opposition will have the high ground.

I want to build the production facilities with an immediate source of income. Methane, sold as natural gas, is sold in a very large and liquid market, meaning that we can delink the steps to a hydrogen-powered economy and take (overcome) them individually.

Under this scenario, no amount of resistance can overcome the first step, and creation of the hydrogen infrastructure becomes risk free.

(Read '20/20 Foresight' by Courtney. It explains the nature of business risk in a very mathematical way)
 
  • #5
Is it more energy efficient to:

Convert Hydrogen to Methane, ship/pump it to site, convert it back?

or

Pump water around and extract the Hydrogen directly?

In the second scenario you also get an Oxygen source.

Bare in mind we already have a water supply infrastructure and you can also build at sites which have water sources.
 
  • #6
jarednjames said:
Is it more energy efficient to:

Convert Hydrogen to Methane, ship/pump it to site, convert it back?

or

Pump water around and extract the Hydrogen directly?

In the second scenario you also get an Oxygen source.

Bear in mind we already have a water supply infrastructure and you can also build at sites which have water sources.

View hydrogen as a way to store energy. If you have the energy, then you can separate hydrogen from water to make the energy portable.

One big point of resistance to clean energy is that the abundant wind, solar and hydraulic sources are often far from the places where they are used. Thus the need for portability and the need for matching "clean" to infrastructure.

So . . . how do I add the carbon atom and make methane? I'm not a chemist or a physicist.
 
  • #7
melch said:
View hydrogen as a way to store energy. If you have the energy, then you can separate hydrogen from water to make the energy portable.

One big point of resistance to clean energy is that the abundant wind, solar and hydraulic sources are often far from the places where they are used. Thus the need for portability and the need for matching "clean" to infrastructure.

What do you want the Hydrogen for? Cars / power production?

Why not just transport water to where it is required and use that? You'd get a lot more Hydrogen from a tank of water than you would from a tank of Methane.

Where are you getting Hydrogen from? If you are splitting it from water then you have your hydrogen and you might as well just ship the water and split it on site. To remove it from water and then recombine it for methane and then ship it and then split it is just adding redundant steps and increasing energy requirements. So where is your original Hydrogen source for combining to methane coming from?
So . . . how do I add the carbon atom and make methane? I'm not a chemist or a physicist.

Strap a bag to a cows backside?
 
  • #8
J:

If you had the energy where you needed it, why make hydrogen? The point is to store the energy in the cleanest possible portable format. Hydrogen could be made at James Bay and piped, without attenuation, to Ottawa.

Cows backsides don't solve the problem either. Although there was a movie in which pig manure was used in methane driver to power a town in post-apocalyptic Australia, most energy is used where large herds of cows are impractical.

You split hydrogen out of water where the energy is. You convert to methane to be able to deliver it today. As the economy turns to hydrogen for energy, there is a real reason for private industry to build new or convert existing infrastructure, which means you no longer have to convert hydrogen to methane. It doesn't have to make sense to answer the question, although, it does make sense.

Do not feel you need to respond if you cannot help with the question as asked. Fun, but I need to keep on track.
 
  • #9
Right, let me clear something up which I may not have understood.

Are you planning to convert hydrogen to methane for transport and then convert back to hydrogen to use?
 
  • #11
jarednjames said:
Right, let me clear something up which I may not have understood.

Are you planning to convert hydrogen to methane for transport and then convert back to hydrogen to use?

No, Once converted to methane, it would be used as Natural Gas.

Otherwise there is no realistic way to move the hydrogen and no efficient market to sell it. This has already started to change, but there is still little incentive and much risk. Losing the risk is the goal of this strategy.
 
  • #12
jarednjames said:
To answer your original question, here is a process that can produce Methane for you using Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction

Thanks. Theoretically, the process used to separate the hydrogen out of water operates at 40% efficiency. reduces that by 1/3, giving 26% efficiency. If using free energy, then 26% should be OK, but there will be a major reduction in cost when the 1) capital for converting to methane is no longer needed and 14% of energy is saved because we are using the energy directly from hydrogen.
 
  • #13
melch:

I'm struggling to understand why you would want to do this.

1. Hydrogen is not "abundant" in any sense of the word I know. It's easily made by electrolyzing water - but we already know how to transmit electricity efficiently. What is the source of hydrogen you have? You indicate that it comes from water - am I assuming wrongly? If that's the case, why not set up a power line (we already have a great electrical infrastructure) and electrolyze your hydrogen where you want it?

2. The appeal of burning hydrogen as fuel is that it contains no carbon, therefore burning it creates no C02, and no greenhouse gasses. While pure methane does not put out many of the other contaminants other organic fuels do, it still puts more carbon in the atmosphere.

3. Methane gas IS abundant - and can be made passively from agricultural waste. Why do we want to create a version of methane that is really expensive (and less environmentally attractive than what you make it from) when there is still a lot of cheap methane in the ground?
 
  • #14
OK, Apparently I've found a bunch of engineers and the like here. The science is not the issue, the financial and political resistance to change are (what did I expect?).

"My" method, which is the SI cycle and some other variants, should eventually be half as expensive as producing natural gas from the ground. Read up on the Marcellus Shale. Solar electricity is fairly easy and becoming more affordable every day, but is not particularly portable at a good price.

I think that Solar is the most abundant, clean energy available so I'd like to start experimenting with the SI cycle (the current national energy plan includes breeder reactors which come on line after 2030 and for the SI cyclke to be used to create hydrogen to make the power portable) and I'd like to have a revenue stream, to overcome the financial resistance. I have two plans to do this; 1) converting hydrogen to methane and still being a tad less expensive than natural gas from the ground and 2) creating a edu-tourism attraction that pays for the experimentation.

Financial resistance has two components:

1) Solar power is generally more expensive at the point of use, facing the daunting costs of storage and attenuation.
2) The infrastructure cannot be built until there is a market and the market can not be developed until there is a plentiful, practical, available and relatively inexpensive supply.

Conversion to natural gas makes use of the stored energy practical on the first day. It overcomes the need for storage, can be shipped in a stable form, so there is no attenuation and there is no need to market it. You just make it available and adjust the price to make it sell more quickly or more slowly.

This is an interim step that makes the whole magilla more likely. It could be one huge addition to the green energy field and could mean that we will not need to curtail energy use (overcoming all the sustainable political objections).
 
  • #15
Solar power production isn't very efficient and it isn't that plentiful so far as locations capable of harvesting it at sufficient levels for useable power (on your scale requirement) goes.

You would need a large solar farm to produce the levels required and this isn't cheap, especially so far as maintenance goes.

As great as all the renewable energy sources are, they aren't consistent. Unless you plan on constructing a hydro plant, you're not going to have a reliable supply (that is, unless you plan on building yourself a large - we're talking massive - solar plant).

I still don't see how extracting hydrogen and converting it is going to be cheaper than the current supply methods for natural gas.

Once you've got the hydrogen, why not just ship it out to where it's needed?

I think you better read this:
http://www.air-liquideuk.co.uk/hydrogen/air-liquide-group/key-figures.html

As you can see there, it is possible to safely transport hydrogen via pipelines and it is already being done over long distances.

I would also draw your attention here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_pipeline_transport

Where it explains the cost of shipping hydrogen is similar to that of natural gas. So it doesn't make a difference which one you ship.

All you are doing by converting the hydrogen is adding a step and increasing the overall costs.
 
  • #16
You may be correct, but 1) hydrogen cannot be shipped through natural gas pipelines, 2) there are 1800km of natural gas pipelines in most counties; but only a few hundred km of hydrogen pipelines in the whole US.

I expect that a significant power source would take hundreds of square miles. As for maintenance, I hope to build a massive array of small appliances (this is mainly to limit and accept the chemical risk - H2SO4 -) which can be cleaned in place or replaced at night and repaired in a workshop. There will be so many that it will require monitors, but that's not a huge issue; utilities already have systems that monitor billions of items with only thousands of "traps" to measure performance.
 
  • #17
melch said:
1) hydrogen cannot be shipped through natural gas pipelines, 2) there are 1800km of natural gas pipelines in most counties; but only a few hundred km of hydrogen pipelines in the whole US.

I take it you've done a comparison of the cost of building the required amount of hydrogen pipeline vs the cost of building "a significant power source would take hundreds of square miles" along with the cost of actually converting to methane?
I expect that a significant power source would take hundreds of square miles. As for maintenance, I hope to build a massive array of small appliances (this is mainly to limit and accept the chemical risk - H2SO4 -) which can be cleaned in place or replaced at night and repaired in a workshop. There will be so many that it will require monitors, but that's not a huge issue; utilities already have systems that monitor billions of items with only thousands of "traps" to measure performance.

It isn't cheap to maintain a power plant, especially solar which would require regular cleaning to maintain efficiency. Again, have you done a rough cost analysis of this vs traditional methods?

Also, what are you going to do when solar isn't available?

Quoting from the wiki article:
Solar power is an intermittent energy source, meaning that solar power is not available at all times, and is normally supplemented by storage or another energy source, for example with wind power and hydropower.

You need a contingency plan, losing production overnight (50% of your capacity) would seriously dent your potential income.

To build a solar / hydro plant to produce hydrogen and then ship it out I can understand and could be profitable. But it's the conversion to methane I don't understand. It just seems like a redundant and expensive step.

Perhaps you could show us your cost analysis so we could see things from your point of view. If it truly is cheaper, hard numbers would certainly get us more likely to believe you.
 
  • #18
melch said:
OK, Apparently I've found a bunch of engineers and the like here. The science is not the issue, the financial and political resistance to change are (what did I expect?).

Why the contempt for engineers? And there is no resistance to change here - I have no interest in the status quo. In fact, alternative energy is generally good for my business.

"My" method, which is the SI cycle and some other variants, should eventually be half as expensive as producing natural gas from the ground. Read up on the Marcellus Shale. Solar electricity is fairly easy and becoming more affordable every day, but is not particularly portable at a good price.

What does Marcellus Shale, a source of natural gas, have to do with this? Solar is not especially easy. You've also said some things which imply you are Canadian - the latitudes Canada is at are especially unfavorable for solar. The portability probably is true for photovoltaics - they produce DC, and not yet enough of it.

I think that Solar is the most abundant, clean energy available so I'd like to start experimenting with the SI cycle (the current national energy plan includes breeder reactors which come on line after 2030 and for the SI cyclke to be used to create hydrogen to make the power portable) and I'd like to have a revenue stream, to overcome the financial resistance. I have two plans to do this; 1) converting hydrogen to methane and still being a tad less expensive than natural gas from the ground and 2) creating a edu-tourism attraction that pays for the experimentation.

Point 1) is where we are all scratching our heads. Methane is really, really cheap. Really cheap. And it is very hard to fathom how "build a massive, high-maintenance, low-duty cycle structure to make an interesting product that you then combine with something else you dig out of the ground to convert to methane" is cheaper than "put a hole in the ground."

Financial resistance has two components:

1) Solar power is generally more expensive at the point of use, facing the daunting costs of storage and attenuation.
2) The infrastructure cannot be built until there is a market and the market can not be developed until there is a plentiful, practical, available and relatively inexpensive supply.

Conversion to natural gas makes use of the stored energy practical on the first day. It overcomes the need for storage, can be shipped in a stable form, so there is no attenuation and there is no need to market it. You just make it available and adjust the price to make it sell more quickly or more slowly.

This is an interim step that makes the whole magilla more likely. It could be one huge addition to the green energy field and could mean that we will not need to curtail energy use (overcoming all the sustainable political objections).

I will agree that IF you can make methane cheaper than we can pull it out of the ground, you have a great idea. That said it would really surprise me if you can, especially in Canada.
 
  • #19
This is turning into a mental struggle, and not a struggle with facts and figures but over the validity of an idea.
 
  • #20
melch said:
You may be correct, but 1) hydrogen cannot be shipped through natural gas pipelines, 2) there are 1800km of natural gas pipelines in most counties; but only a few hundred km of hydrogen pipelines in the whole US.

So you're looking to solve the entirely non-existent problem of moving hydrogen from the North Sea to continental Europe, or from Alaska to the "lower 48", etc? That's what most of the pipelines are for. As for local distribution networks, then you are entirely capable of utilizing existing infrastructure for hydrogen. In fact, in many European cities, the existing gas distribution infrastructure was originally built for a hydrogen gas mixture, namely coal gas.

I get the impression that you've read that one book on risk, and you're deluding yourself that it's given you some unique insight into the issues that engineers don't have, despite not knowing anything about chemistry or chemical engineering yourself. It does not. Process economics and risk management are basic parts of every chemical engineering program worth its name. I have a close friend with an M.S. in chemical engineering who works full-time with risk management.

You're presenting solutions to non-problems and non-solutions to actual problems, and rather than actually learn something, you're dismissing any criticism on the grounds that people are resistant to change, and "the science is not an issue" - when it clearly is. Consider the possibility that the reason nobody has had your idea before isn't because you know something everyone else doesn't, but because you don't know enough to know why it's a stupid idea in the first place.

You've literally suggested that we form methane from hydrogen using carbon, i.e. coal - which completely defeats the reasons why we want to use hydrogen as a fuel in the first place - so that we can transport it using infrastructure connecting places where there isn't any hydrogen being produced, all while losing lots of energy in the conversion process. That is undoubtedly one of the stupidest ideas I've heard in a while.
 
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  • #21
Crew

I'm brand new here and this is my first post. I am a regular at TheBackshed.com out of Australia and I found this forum by following a link on the subject of methane production from pure hydrogen. I tried to put my 2-cents' worth in as a "reply" to a comment on this thread, but it wouldn't let me so here I am. That being said, here's my question:

How can I produce methane gas from pure hydrogen without using the Sabatier Reaction?

Let me give you a little background. On TheBackshed.com, most of us build windmills, myself included. The windmills produce electricity using several methods. I build three-phase alternators and rectify the current for use in charging batteries on the ground. To that end, there are times when the alternator puts out more than the batteries either want or can handle and the "excess" is diverted to what is called a "dump load" which is more often than not, merely a resistive load like a water heater. This saves the whole shebang from catching fire, etc.

What we'd like to be able to do is run the excess d.c (direct current) through a Brown's Gas generator (simple electro-mechanical device) to create hydrogen and oxygen from water. The oxygen is "scrubbed" off with iron filings--steel wool and what is left is almost pure hydrogen gas. We'd then like somehow to turn this elusive gas into methane, to be stored under a water column (most likely) and used as a method of storing excess electricity. The methane could be used for cooking or heating or as a weak motive fuel.

Any ideas? . . . . . Mac (MacGyver @ TheBackshed.com--MacGyver2 here)
 
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  • #22
a) We are getting pretty good at transferring electricity from place to place, and although you would get some energy loss from the wires, I can't see how it would be more efficient to use that electricity to muck around extracting hydrogen, reacting it, transporting it, extracting it again(?) and then using it for whatever purpose you want to use it for, seeing as you could probably use electricity to do that job anyway.

b) You mentioned something about hydrogen fuel being more "eco-friendly", and really, at the moment, that's a joke. Yes, in the future we could use solar panels and the like, but making a solar panel is in no way a "green process".

c) In my opinion, stop trying to get energy from sources like solar power and wind power and go and build a nice, safe, nuclear reactor. It worked for the French.
 
  • #23
Mac,

The only method I can think of off the top of my head is to use the Hydrogen (and a nickel catalyst) to reduce methanol to methane and water, but this probably isn't very helpful, unless you have a large supply of methanol lying around. I suppose you could make some from a bacterial colony, but that would be messy.
 
  • #24
MacGyver2 said:
What we'd like to be able to do is run the excess d.c (direct current) through a Brown's Gas generator (simple electro-mechanical device) to create hydrogen and oxygen from water. The oxygen is "scrubbed" off with iron filings--steel wool and what is left is almost pure hydrogen gas. We'd then like somehow to turn this elusive gas into methane, to be stored under a water column (most likely) and used as a method of storing excess electricity. The methane could be used for cooking or heating or as a weak motive fuel.

If you use DC and have well separated electrodes, there should be no need for oxygen scrubbing, hydrogen evolves only on the cathode.

From the economical point of view using hydrogen directly should be much more efficient than converting it to methane first.

And no, no idea about how to convert hydrogen into methane. Note that you will need additional source of carbon for that, and in fact most of the energy stored in methane would come from that carbon. While not necessarily impossible, it sounds like buying coal for heating would be much simpler...
 
  • #25
Borek said:
From the economical point of view using hydrogen directly should be much more efficient than converting it to methane first.

Borek: The only point to creating methane is the ready infrastructure for natural gas. You can ship it cheaply, use it in ready made appliances, buy Natural Gas if your supply of manufactured methane is inadequate.

If we solved this problem, there would be a funding source for clean energy development, and many minds on many paths is a lot more powerful than the best minds on a single path.
 
  • #26
It's been a while since this thread popped up.

Personally, I support nuclear and would rather see money spent developing a number of nuclear power plants, and then wiping gas out of public use - everything in the home could run on electric. No need to bring things like oil and gas into the equation unless you live way out in the sticks.

I say this because to me, spending excess money on creating what I see as a complex and expensive way to achieve the same thing is pointless - which is exactly what I see this as.

If you remove the need for gas in the home by doing the above, any gas is purely for industry.

Plus, nuclear would reduce dependence on other countries for oil, gas and coal. Which would hopefully allow cheaper energy prices over time.
 
  • #27
JNJ: Nuclear is very clean, but it is only safe under rigorous conditions so its not suitable everywhere. There are still the issues of radioactivity that lasts millions of years and the limited availability of nuclear fuel. Plus people hate nuclear. My front window looks out on Shoreham, which is a plant that never opened because it would be impossible to evacuate Long Island in case of a meltdown. No nuclear power plant has been opened in the US since 3-mile-island because of the people's distaste for them.

If you read the whole thread, I am kicking around some ideas that would allow solar energy to be stored as hydrogen. When Solar runs out, we will no longer need any energy on Earth anyway, so it is a permanent solution.
 
  • #28
Firstly, what people think of nuclear is irrelevant. They either want electric or they don't. Eventually it won't be a debate. It will be the only viable option - especially when you consider the numbers of renewable sources required to provide equal output. Besides, the public are idiots and are all about hype. Rational and reasonable discussion is the only way forward, with decisions on such topics by people who actually have knowledge in the field. Not random eco-warriors campaigning against it and the public who know only what is in the news (you hear about Chernobyl yearly, but how often do you hear about other plants "running perfectly"?).

Then have the rigorous conditions in place. No reason they can't be.

I wasn't aware nuclear materials are in short supply. Everything I've seen indicates otherwise, do you have a source?

So far as getting rid of it goes, I like the idea of putting it in subduction zones so it is 'reclaimed' into the Earth eventually. Factor in the amount of nuclear waste produced by each plant yearly and it really isn't that much of a problem.

Now, I've been with the thread from the start and I haven't seen anything that shows it as a viable means, especially over nuclear production.
 
  • #29
Firstly, what people think of nuclear is irrelevant. They either want electric or they don't. Eventually it won't be a debate. It will be the only viable option - especially when you consider the numbers of renewable sources required to provide equal output.

Then have the rigorous conditions in place. No reason they can't be.

I wasn't aware nuclear materials are in short supply. Everything I've seen indicates otherwise, do you have a source?

So far as getting rid of it goes, I like the idea of putting it in subduction zones so it is 'reclaimed' into the Earth eventually. Factor in the amount of nuclear waste produced by each plant yearly and it really isn't that much of a problem.

Now, I've been with the thread from the start and I haven't seen anything that shows it as a viable means, especially over nuclear production.
 
  • #30
Crew

Thanks for all the insight, but methane seemed to me to be the easiest route as an alternate "dump load" since that is my main goal in all this.

As for using hydrogen directly, I've tried that, but it's such a small atom, it's hard to contain and when it is oxidized at only 4%, it burns 'explosively' without much heat. Someone said the major heat value here would be from the carbon atom in the methane and I concur. Still, there just has to be a simple way to do this (Mac crosses his fingers).

As for separating the cathode and anode to achieve individual gas isolation, yes, that works, but the amount of current needed to pull it off is ginormous! My windmills are small and generate only about 400 watts in a stiff breeze, so I would need to keep the electrodes as close as physically possible, without them touching and short-circuiting them. I do this with a high-nicklle-content center electrode suspended within an aluminum tube, carried by small "doughnut" insulators. The resulting gas flow is huge, but I must scrub off the oxygen or face questioning by the local police bomb squad (which has actually happened onc! and is not high up on my "things I'd like to do again" list!).

I'll keep searching; there's got to be some easy way to do this :smile:


. . . . . Mac
 
  • #31
MacGyver2 said:
As for separating the cathode and anode to achieve individual gas isolation, yes, that works, but the amount of current needed to pull it off is ginormous!

That's an economical argument and it makes sense. But then you say

I must scrub off the oxygen

and from the same point of view - economy of the whole process - it doesn't make sense. You need first something to scrub the oxygen, then you need energy to convert hydrogen to something else. I doubt additional costs are worth additional energy you can get from the system this way. Additional battery to add energy storage seems more logical to me.
 
  • #32
Borek

We're not talking efficiency here. This is a hobby; who cares about efficiency? If this becomes too large a white elephant, we will use a resistive load as has been done forever. I was just trying to be creative and come up with a new trick, that's all.

And as for scrubbing the oxygen, all one need do is pass the H-O mixture under its own partial pressure through steel wool and it's a done deal. I wish adding a carbon atom was as easy!


. . . . . . Mac
 
  • #33
MacGyver2 said:
And as for scrubbing the oxygen, all one need do is pass the H-O mixture under its own partial pressure through steel wool and it's a done deal. I wish adding a carbon atom was as easy!

And what is a chemistry behind? Is it not reaction of iron with the oxygen? If so, you need to replace the steel wool now and again.
 
  • #34
True; I've got a shopping bag full! No biggie. . . . . . Mac
 
  • #35
No biggie, but it makes economy of the process worse again.
 
<h2>1. What is the purpose of adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen?</h2><p>Adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen allows for the creation of hydrocarbons, which are the basis of many important substances such as fuels, plastics, and pharmaceuticals.</p><h2>2. How is a carbon atom added to pure hydrogen?</h2><p>A carbon atom can be added to pure hydrogen through a process called hydrogenation, where hydrogen gas is reacted with a carbon-containing compound, such as an alkene or alkyne.</p><h2>3. What are the potential benefits of adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen?</h2><p>The addition of a carbon atom to pure hydrogen can lead to the creation of new and useful compounds that have a wide range of applications in various industries, including energy, materials, and medicine.</p><h2>4. Are there any drawbacks to adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen?</h2><p>One potential drawback is that the production of hydrocarbons from pure hydrogen may require the use of non-renewable resources, such as fossil fuels, which can contribute to environmental issues.</p><h2>5. Can adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen be done in a sustainable way?</h2><p>Yes, there are efforts being made to develop sustainable methods for adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen, such as using renewable energy sources for the production of hydrogen and developing new catalysts that can facilitate the reaction without the use of non-renewable resources.</p>

1. What is the purpose of adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen?

Adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen allows for the creation of hydrocarbons, which are the basis of many important substances such as fuels, plastics, and pharmaceuticals.

2. How is a carbon atom added to pure hydrogen?

A carbon atom can be added to pure hydrogen through a process called hydrogenation, where hydrogen gas is reacted with a carbon-containing compound, such as an alkene or alkyne.

3. What are the potential benefits of adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen?

The addition of a carbon atom to pure hydrogen can lead to the creation of new and useful compounds that have a wide range of applications in various industries, including energy, materials, and medicine.

4. Are there any drawbacks to adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen?

One potential drawback is that the production of hydrocarbons from pure hydrogen may require the use of non-renewable resources, such as fossil fuels, which can contribute to environmental issues.

5. Can adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen be done in a sustainable way?

Yes, there are efforts being made to develop sustainable methods for adding a carbon atom to pure hydrogen, such as using renewable energy sources for the production of hydrogen and developing new catalysts that can facilitate the reaction without the use of non-renewable resources.

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