A research team, affiliated with UNIST has come up with an innovative hydrocarbon manufacturing route, using a commercially available ball-milling device. The new method has commercial potential, as it uses natural wood-derived charcoal to produce methane (CH4), the main hydrocarbon component of natural gas.
Large-scale carbon hydrogasification. a) Pinewood, and as-prepared charcoal after wood pyrolysis. b) Home-made roll-mill with a 15-liter container. c) Comparison between small-scale planetary mill and large-scale roll-mill. A research team, affiliated with UNIST has come up with an innovative hydrocarbon manufacturing route, using a commercially available ball-milling device. The new method has commercial potential, as it uses natural wood-derived charcoal to produce methane (CH 4 ), the main hydrocarbon component of natural gas. Published in the March 2022 issue of Angewandte Chemie International Edition, this breakthrough has been led by Professor Jong-Beom Baek in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST. "Using the mechanical collision created by the ball-milling technique, we can easily decompose charcoal to produce methane," said Professor Baek. "We expect that this method can even enable the production of methane from coal, a fossil fuel similar to charcoal." In this study, the research team demonstrated a…