Hydrogen, as a by-product of the MIRALON® FC-CVD manufacturing process, can be used as a fuel for sustainable transportation of goods and people, or as a raw material for the manufacture of other products.
MIRALON® Near Net-Zero Manufacturing Process
The MIRALON® technology process takes natural gas or other hydrocarbons and separates it, resulting in clean ‘turquoise’ hydrogen and our MIRALON® carbon nanotube material. In contrast to traditional hydrogen production (via Steam Methane Reforming or SMR), with Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage projects, the MIRALON® process avoids the creation of large volumes of carbon dioxide and instead creates a valuable solid carbon product. Therefore, the MIRALON® process creates two valuable outputs and eliminates the cost of carbon capture associated with SMR.
Additionally, an environmental study by MIT researchers, as part of an ARPA-E supported project, found that when compared to SMR, the MIRALON® process reduced the CO2 footprint of clean hydrogen production by as much as 95 percent. And MIRALON® production sites can be highly flexible because they are designed to work with pipeline-fed natural gas and able to be co-located with sites that utilize hydrogen in industries such as steel, chemical and power generation.
To hear more about this unique process and how it compares to Steam Methane Reforming (SMR), check out this bonus clip from our recent Huntsman Knows How Podcast episode on MIRALON Carbon Nano Technology.
Listen to our Huntsman Knows How Podcast episode on MIRALON® Carbon Nanotube Materials, where guests John Fraser and Zach Lyles discuss what makes the MIRALON® technology so versatile. Learn how MIRALON® carbon nanotube materials are not only expanding the boundaries of what's possible in the advanced materials space, but—through the manufacturing process itself—how it delivers a creative carbon capture strategy that simultaneously supports the production of clean, localized hydrogen.
You can also visit our Huntsman Battery Materials page to learn how MIRALON® carbon materials for electric vehicle battery cells extend battery cell life, increase capacity, and improve the safety of lithium-ion batteries.
Building Sustainable Partnerships
As Huntsman scales up production of MIRALON® carbon nanotube materials, there is a strong need to build partnerships with key industry leaders to identify new applications in areas such as construction and transportation. Huntsman cannot drive the adoption of these new materials in isolation, therefore working together with academia, our government, and industry leaders is essential.
Huntsman recently joined the CarbonHub, a non-competitive partnership of industry, academia, institutes, and non-profit organizations with similar goals. Established by Rice University in Houston, Texas, the Carbon Hub aligns business performance with a commitment to environmental, social, and community stewardship. The group aims to accelerate energy transition to a reliable and sustainable generation of green energy through the responsible use of hydrocarbons as a feedstock for ubiquitous carbon materials.
MIRALON® carbon nanotube materials enable strong, lightweight, and environmentally resistant solutions - solving customers’ problems, even in the harshest conditions.
A payload going into space orbit needs to weigh as little as possible, but also needs its material components to be durable, and ideally, multifunctional. On the NASA Juno spacecraft, MIRALON® sheets were used to provide protection against electrostatic discharge (ESD) as the spacecraft made its way to Jupiter. The sheets replaced traditional metallic solutions which are typically bonded to the surface of the composites. MIRALON® sheets were incorporated as a layer directly onto the composite, making it an integral part of the spacecraft’s flight protection system.