Prioritizing technologies for low-carbon hydrogen production under technical and market uncertainty

Hydrogen production via methane pyrolysis offers a promising pathway to reduce emissions. However, despite multiple methane pyrolysis technologies being developed for low-carbon hydrogen, there is little guidance on which routes should be prioritized for near-term deployment under realistic technical and market uncertainty. Prior technoeconomic analyses (TEA) are usually stand-alone case studies with differing system boundaries, scales and carbon-revenue assumptions, which makes cross-route cost comparisons difficult and prone to bias. This study develops an experiment-anchored TEA with uncertainty analysis to evaluate three methane pyrolysis routes. The routes are a fluidized-bed reactor (FBR), a molten-metal reactor (MMR) and a molten-salt reactor (MSR), all modeled at 3288 t H₂ day−1 with unified system boundaries. Each route is parameterized using experimentally derived performance data and two boundary cases for carbon management (disposal only versus demand-constrained valorization). Monte Carlo simulations and global sensitivity analyses quantify levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) distributions and identify dominant cost drivers. Without carbon revenue, median LCOH is 2.46, 2.67 and 3.78 USD/kg H₂ for FBR, MSR and MMR, respectively. Incorporating a market-constrained graphite model that penalizes oversupply reduces median LCOH to 0.79, 0.98 and 2.08 USD/kg H₂. A paired Monte Carlo simulation shows that FBR is cheaper than MSR in 62% of cases and cheaper than MMR in 95% of cases. Meanwhile, MSR is more cost-effective than MMR in 89% of cases, driven primarily by MMR catalyst costs. These findings support evidence-based selection of methane-pyrolysis technologies within low-carbon hydrogen portfolios.