Effects of catalyst on conversion of animal farm waste into hydrogen and carbon nanomaterials

• Main Author: Poh, Yi Sheng
• Other Authors: Grzegorz Lisak
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Engineering; Hydrogen; Carbon nanomaterials; MWCNT; Pyrolysis; Manure
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/177377
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges in the 21st century. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have been progressively warming the planet, evidenced by reports declaring 2023 as the hottest year on record. Influx of renewable energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, and ocean has been prevalent, and there has been increasing adoption of such technology to produce energy. Hydrogen is a potential solution to support and aid renewables in providing clean energy. There has been hydrogen production, but more focus needs to be on increasing production and steering clear of pollutive production methods. This project aims to produce hydrogen using the pyrolysis – CO2 capture – CVD process to break down animal waste into hydrogen while producing MWCNT. Horse and cow manure has been used, with 3 catalyst variants, Co-Fe-Mo-MgO, Co-Ni-Mo-MgO, and Co-Mo-MgO. Cow manure has had the better performance, generating the greatest yield of hydrogen across all experiments. Cow manure reacting with Co-Ni-Mo-MgO produced the greatest amount of hydrogen, at 144 ml/min. This combination also produced the greatest yield of MWCNT, at 4.84 wt.%. However, analysis of potential electricity supply using hydrogen for both cow and horse manure using the highest performance catalyst yield only 0.003% of Singapore’s electricity demand. This suggest that this process might not be feasible in the local context. It might be more practical to perform the pyrolysis process in another country that conducts farming at a greater scale.