The demand for alternative sources of heating and hot water heating increased rapidly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 and the subsequent energy crisis. Political groupings across the European Union thus began to look for alternatives to replace natural gas, on which many countries, including the Czech Republic, depended and a large part of which came from Russia.
At some moments, it could seem that natural gas is over within the European twenty-seven and that its rapid decline will gradually occur. Although the consumption of natural gas in households and companies has increased significantly decreasedgas is no longer perceived as a source of ecological transition from fossil fuels to a renewable economy.
But that could change thanks to a Munich start-up
Electrochaea. This is because he wants to ensure the production of a climate-friendly substitute for natural gas, which could already be used in the present.
For several years, there have been debates about how the current gas network could be used in the future to distribute hydrogen, which should provide an ecological alternative to gas. However, the production of hydrogen is still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, so switching to hydrogen would not help us much in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, hydrogen storage and distribution are currently still expensive and complex.
The German start-up therefore proposes the production of alternative natural gas, which uses hydrogen, but only as a means of producing gas, which can already be stored, transported and use in the current gas network.
Elektrochaea, which was founded in Munich in 2014, currently has capital from seven investors and already has sixty employees. So it is not just another experimental start-up, whose technology often ends up only in the experimental stages.
In addition to employees, the company also employs other team members who, of course, you can’t see with the naked eye. This is because they are ancient micro-organisms archaea (from which the company’s name was also partially derived), they are the important helpers who ensure the creation of gas, which the company is dedicated to.
Production of biogas, who wants to acquire Elektrochaea is quite simple. First, the standard splitting of water into oxygen and hydrogen occurs in the so-called electrolyzer, which is not a new technology and is already used to obtain hydrogen today. In the second step, archaea microorganisms are already included in the solution, which both substances, with the help of CO2, can split into so-called green methane, i.e. biogas.
It can subsequently be stored, distributed and used in industry as well as in households by means of standard gas boilers, just as is the case with currently used natural gas.
In the future, the company would like to sell its biomethane production system under license. Thanks to its technologies, the customer, i.e. very often an energy company, could to build their own biogas production plant, which she could distribute to the network. At the same time, the main use of such technology would be primarily for the production of biogas from surpluses produced by renewable sources.
2024-04-05 12:17:24
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