Code and Data for “Strategies for decarbonizing natural gas with electrosynthesized methane”

Natural gas supplies nearly a quarter of the world's energy and is growing faster than any other energy source. One pathway to reduce the CO2 emission intensity of natural gas without transitioning end-use infrastructure is to synthesize a natural gas substitute from CO2 and renewable energy via electrochemical CO2 reduction. To improve the economic viability of electrogas, this work examines the possibility of using electrolyzer products without downstream separation. We quantify the electrolyzer performance needed to replicate the key heating value, safety, and emissions characteristics of natural gas. We find that, except in the case of unrealistically high device performance, directly synthesized electrogas is unable to reproduce all necessary properties of natural gas. We discover, however, a range of safe and low-emitting electrogas compositions likely achievable with current technology which can be blended with natural gas to reduce its CO2 intensity while retaining sufficient heating value., This repository contains code and resultant datasets for “Strategies for decarbonizing natural gas with electrosynthesized methane” published in Cell Reports Physical Science summarized above. Code includes functions to calculate key combustion characteristics of electrogas and natural gas including Wobbe index, flammability limits, flame speed, ignition temperature, and nitrous oxides (NOx), CO and soot emissions. These combustion characteristics are calculated for potential electrogases as a function of device performance and also for a sampling of potential natural gases through a Monte Carlo study. Scripts are also included which reproduce the figures found in the manuscript and supplemental information. Finally, this repository contains the datasets generated by these scripts as well as input tables and chemical mechanism files. See 1_README.txt for more information on individual files as well as the packages required to run scripts., Note that the 'Original Format' should be downloaded rather than the 'Archival Format' to maintain compatibility for the flammability limit calculations.