Tulum Vitality rediscovered a forgotten hydrogen tech and used it to lift $27M

It was a mistake that was forward of its time.

Between 2002 and 2005, engineers with the Techint Group have been attempting to dial in a brand new electrical arc furnace for a steelmaker after they observed one thing odd. The carbon electrodes, slightly than breaking down, have been rising bigger. 

The staff had inadvertently created what’s generally known 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 staff reported their discovery internally after which, mainly, forgot about it.

“Back then, nobody cared because nobody cared about methane pyrolysis, about hydrogen,” Massimiliano Pieri, CEO of Tulum Vitality, instructed TechCrunch. The experiment was largely forgotten for the following 20 years.

However a few years in the past, traders for the Techint Group’s company VC arm, TechEnergy Ventures, have been scouring the panorama for brand new methods to supply hydrogen from methane with out the standard air pollution.

Techint’s traders didn’t must look far. “Someone in the company realized, ‘But we already have that. We have this discovery,’” Pieri stated.

So the conglomerate dusted off the thought and spun out Tulum to show the unintentional discovery right into a viable enterprise. Lately, Tulum closed an oversubscribed $27 million seed spherical led by TDK Ventures and CDP Enterprise Capital, the corporate solely instructed TechCrunch. Doral Vitality-Tech Ventures, MITO Tech Ventures, and TechEnergy Ventures participated.

Tulum isn’t the one startup pursuing methane pyrolysis as a method to produce hydrogen. Fashionable Hydrogen, Molten Industries, and Monolith are amongst Tulum’s opponents. The response has attracted consideration for its potential to supply hydrogen from low cost, extensively obtainable 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 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 opponents require. In its use of the electrical arc furnace, Tulum can be utilizing a extensively used — if modified — expertise.

“This gives you a big head start,” 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 nicely, 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 business plant would generate two tons of hydrogen and 600 tons of carbon per day.

Tulum is hoping its business 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 just 50 cents more than most hydrogen made out of pure gasoline at present, and it considerably undercuts a few of the main inexperienced hydrogen strategies. That’s earlier than the corporate sells any carbon that its course of generates.

Not dangerous for an virtually forgotten mistake.