Getting power from poop, with Levidian’s Loop – TechCrunch

The U.K. water industry produces a tremendous amount of biogas every year. These gases are used to generate power and heat on-site. They can also be converted into biomethane and injected back into national gas grid. United Utilities will be receiving new research funding to determine if they can use the gasses. Levidian’s Loop system These waste gases can be converted into carbon-negative hydrogen (which can easily stored for later usage) and graphene which has many interesting uses, including in medicine and electronics.

“This is an exciting project that will lead the way to utilize Loop to decarbonize biogas at scale,” comments Levidian CEO John Hartley. “The consortium has a vast amount of knowledge and experience, which we are leveraging to produce carbon-negative hydrogen — there is no better goal to be working on right now.”

The U.K. government’s Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy has awarded the project around $250,000 (£212,000, to be exact) through the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio for the first phase of a project. The project is expected to prove both commercially viable and environmental friendly.

The consortium will conduct a phase one feasibility study to determine the performance and efficiency of different biogas samples within a small-scale Loop system at the Levidian Technology Centre. The primary purpose of the Levidian Loop is to create hydrogen. However, it doubles as a carbon-capture technology. The carbon extracted from biogas is stored in graphene. This graphene can then be used to decarbonize other products.

The company claims that the hydrogen produced by Loop will be carbon negative — if the system is powered by renewable electricity, that is.

Levidian was established in 2012 and is a British-based climate-tech company. Its Loop technology converts methane to hydrogen and carbon, locking the carbon in high-quality, green graphene. This device cracks methane into its constituent elements, hydrogen and carbon using a low temperature, low pressure process without the need for catalysts or add-ons.