Specific heat and thermal methane cracking from basic research to applied science

yang-yuan chen^1,2*

¹Institute of physics/物理所, Academia Sinica/中央研究院, Taipei/台北市, Taiwan
²Applied science/應物所, National Chengchi University/政治大學, Taipei/台北市, Taiwan

* Presenter:yang-yuan chen, email:cheny2@phys.sinica.edu.tw

In this talk I will first introduce the development of specific heat system, specific heat is an important physical property for basic research, from which the roles of phonons and electrons play in various properties of materials can be understood. The motivation and the detailed construction of the system will be illustrated in terms of design, programming and optimization. Its function on researches will be shown in the studies of superconductivity, magnetism and structural transformation. The technique learned from this system setup will be extended to the practical construction of thermal methane cracking device, which is believed to be an effective method to solve the global warming. The thermal methane cracking device can decompose methane into carbon and hydrogen, thus turns the methane electrical plant to hydrogen electrical plant with no carbon dioxide emission. To the present we have successfully thermally cracking the methane into carbon and hydrogen under the assistance of applying catalysts such as Ni and Sn.

Keywords: specific heat, methane, thermal cracking, hydrogen