United Kingdom – The government’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio awards funding to Levidian and United Utilities for the initial stage of a biogas to hydrogen project.
For the first phase of a project that will use biogas from wastewater treatment as a fully sustainable feedstock to produce hydrogen and graphene through the Levidian LOOP, the UK Government’s department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has awarded £212,000 funding through the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP). Leading the project will be United Utilities.
The anaerobic digestion processes used by the UK water industry result in an annual production of 489 million cubic meters of biogas. The primary purposes of this biogas are to produce on-site operational heat and power. Additionally, it can be transformed into biomethane and returned to the grid. This biogas could be significantly decarbonized and have its value maximized by installing LOOP on water treatment facilities, which would also create new business opportunities.
The consortium will be able to evaluate the performance of various biogas samples in a small-scale LOOP system at the Levidian Technology Centre in Cambridge as well as conduct in-depth analysis to maximize the hydrogen output thanks to the phase one feasibility study. In phase two, which will involve extensive field trials, the teams will also confirm the LOOP100 design with integrated hydrogen separation for deployment on a United Utilities site.
Carbon negative
While producing hydrogen is the main objective of the work, the Levidian LOOP is also a cutting-edge carbon capture and utilization technology. High quality graphene is created by permanently encapsulating the biogas’s extracted carbon, which can then be used to decarbonize a wide range of other products. Because of this special combination, hydrogen produced by LOOP will be carbon negative, assuming the use of renewable electricity.
The consortium combines the technical know-how of Levidian with the biogas resources of United Utilities, and Jacobs contributes its expertise in lifecycle analyses, social value analysis, and commercialization.
