Produced Methane by Burning Wood... Developed Perfect Synthesis Technology for Charcoal with 99.8% Natural Gas Main Component

UNIST Professor Jangbeom Baek's Team Develops Technique Using Rolling Metal Spheres

A methane production technology using charcoal made by burning wood has been developed.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] A technology that produces methane, the main component of natural gas, from charcoal made by burning wood has emerged, drawing attention to its commercialization potential. It is particularly notable for achieving an actual gas production efficiency close to 100% in theory.

The research team led by Professor Baek Jong-beom of the Department of Energy and Chemical Engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) announced on the 14th that they have developed a hydrocarbon gas production technology using the ball-milling technique.

This technology produces methane, a type of hydrocarbon, using charcoal directly made by burning wood as the raw material, raising expectations about its commercial viability.

Professor Baek Jong-beom explained, “Methane gas can be easily produced by decomposing charcoal through the collision force of metal beads in ball-milling,” adding, “It could be applied to production processes that gasify coal, which is similar to charcoal.”

This synthesis method involves placing carbon raw materials, hydrogen, and catalysts into a container with small metal beads, then rotating the container to induce reactions.

The research team introduced that the principle is that the collision force of the beads causes the carbon raw materials to react with the catalyst, breaking strong carbon-carbon chemical bonds, and hydrogen attaches to the decomposed carbon to synthesize methane.

A graph comparing hydrocarbon gasification reactions under various conditions.

Analysis of the gas produced by ball milling. The methane content was the highest at 99.8%.

Using the newly developed synthesis method, the research team synthesized methane gas with a high yield of up to 99.8% under low temperature of 40℃ and normal atmospheric pressure conditions. Compared to existing hydrocarbon manufacturing methods that achieve about 80% yield even at high temperatures of 600℃, this is a superior technology.

The team explained that this was possible because the mechanochemical energy of ball-milling significantly improved the rate of hydrocarbon gasification reactions, which are among the slowest chemical reactions.

When chemical reaction rates are slow, side reactions produce many by-products, lowering yield, and high-temperature reaction conditions are required to supply energy.

Notably, even in a 15L large-capacity ball-milling process using charcoal made directly as raw material, methane gas production efficiency relative to power consumption was as high as in small-scale experiments.

Dr. Gao-Feng Han, first author and lead researcher from the Department of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST (currently a professor at Jilin University, China), explained, “Hydrocarbon gasification reactions are among the most difficult carbon-related reactions, requiring large-scale high-temperature processes and making it hard to achieve high yields, but we solved this with the ball-milling process.”

This research was published in the prestigious international chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

The research was supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT’s Leader Researcher Support Project (Creative Research), the Science Research Center (SRC), and the U-K Brand Development Project (UNIST).

Dr. Gao-Feng Han.

Professor Baek Jongbeom, UNIST.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.