It was a mistake that was forward of its time.
Between 2002 and 2005, engineers with the Techint Group had been attempting to dial in a brand new electrical arc furnace for a steelmaker once they seen one thing odd. The carbon electrodes, fairly than breaking down, had been rising bigger.
The group had inadvertently created what’s referred to as a pyrolysis response, which is mainly burning one thing within the absence of oxygen. On this case, the furnace was splitting methane into pure hydrogen and pure carbon. The group reported their discovery internally after which, mainly, 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 Vitality, instructed TechCrunch. The experiment was largely forgotten for the subsequent 20 years.
However a few years in the past, buyers for the Techint Group’s company VC arm, TechEnergy Ventures, had been scouring the panorama for brand spanking new methods to supply hydrogen from methane with out the standard air pollution.
Techint’s buyers didn’t should look far. “Somebody within the firm realized, ‘However we have already got that. Now we have this discovery,’” Pieri mentioned.
So the conglomerate dusted off the thought and spun out Tulum to show the unintentional discovery right into a viable enterprise. Not too long ago, Tulum closed an oversubscribed $27 million seed spherical led by TDK Ventures and CDP Enterprise Capital, the corporate completely instructed TechCrunch. Doral Vitality-Tech Ventures, MITO Tech Ventures, and TechEnergy Ventures participated.
Tulum isn’t the one startup pursuing methane pyrolysis as a solution to produce hydrogen. Trendy Hydrogen, Molten Industries, and Monolith are amongst Tulum’s rivals. The response has attracted consideration for its capability to supply hydrogen from low-cost, extensively out there pure fuel with none carbon dioxide emissions. In pyrolysis, methane is damaged down within the absence of oxygen, the one merchandise are hydrogen fuel and a mud of stable carbon, each of which may be bought.
However Tulum differs in a couple of 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 — know-how.
“This offers you an enormous head begin,” Pieri mentioned.
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 mentioned 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 fuel are each low-cost. At that value, it’s simply 50 cents greater than most hydrogen produced from pure fuel as we speak, and it considerably undercuts a number of the main inexperienced hydrogen strategies. That’s earlier than the corporate sells any carbon that its course of generates.
Not unhealthy for an nearly forgotten mistake.
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