It was a mistake that was forward of its time.
Between 2002 and 2005, engineers with the Techint Group have been making an attempt to dial in a brand new electrical arc furnace for a steelmaker once they observed one thing odd. The carbon electrodes, slightly than breaking down, have been rising bigger.
The crew had inadvertently created what’s referred to as a pyrolysis response, which is principally burning one thing within the absence of oxygen. On this case, the furnace was splitting methane into pure hydrogen and pure carbon. The crew reported their discovery internally after which, principally, forgot about it.
“Again then, no person cared as a result of no person cared about methane pyrolysis, about hydrogen,” Massimiliano Pieri, CEO of Tulum Power, advised TechCrunch. The experiment was largely forgotten for the following 20 years.
However a few years in the past, buyers for the Techint Group’s company VC arm, TechEnergy Ventures, have been scouring the panorama for brand spanking new methods to provide hydrogen from methane with out the same old air pollution.
Techint’s buyers didn’t must look far. “Somebody within the firm realized, ‘However we have already got that. We’ve this discovery,’” Pieri stated.
So the conglomerate dusted off the thought and spun out Tulum to show the unintended discovery right into a viable enterprise. Just lately, Tulum closed an oversubscribed $27 million seed spherical led by TDK Ventures and CDP Enterprise Capital, the corporate completely advised TechCrunch. Doral Power-Tech Ventures, MITO Tech Ventures, and TechEnergy Ventures participated.
Tulum isn’t the one startup pursuing methane pyrolysis as a strategy to produce hydrogen. Trendy Hydrogen, Molten Industries, and Monolith are amongst Tulum’s rivals. The response has attracted consideration for its capacity to provide hydrogen from low-cost, extensively out there pure gasoline with none carbon dioxide emissions. In pyrolysis, methane is damaged down within the absence of oxygen, the one merchandise are hydrogen gasoline and a mud of strong carbon, each of which could be bought.
However Tulum differs in just a few methods. For one, it doesn’t want to make use of costly catalysts to encourage the pyrolysis response, which a few of its rivals require. In its use of the electrical arc furnace, Tulum can also be utilizing a extensively used — if modified — expertise.
“This provides you a giant head begin,” Pieri stated.
Tulum will use the seed funding to construct a pilot plant in Mexico alongside an present Techint Group metal plant. If all goes effectively, the metal plant might purchase hydrogen and carbon straight from Tulum to be used in its operations.
Pieri stated that at full-scale manufacturing, a industrial plant would generate two tons of hydrogen and 600 tons of carbon per day.
Tulum is hoping its industrial scale plant will produce one kilogram of hydrogen for about $1.50 within the U.S., the place electrical energy and pure gasoline are each low-cost. At that worth, it’s simply 50 cents extra than most hydrogen created from pure gasoline immediately, and it considerably undercuts among the main inexperienced hydrogen strategies. That’s earlier than the corporate sells any carbon that its course of generates.
Not dangerous for an nearly forgotten mistake.
