Clean hydrogen developer Hexla and climate tech company Levidian have teamed up to turn cow slurry into hydrogen on the site of the Glastonbury Festival.
Somerset’s Worthy Farm, which hosts the world-famous music festival each summer and is a fully functioning dairy farm year-round, produces power using an anaerobic digestion plant that runs on cow slurry and waste silage. Now, Levidian’s LOOP technology will be added to the plant, allowing carbon captured from the energy process to be converted into graphene and clean hydrogen.
The graphene produced can then be sold and used in the production of batteries, concretes and plastics, while the clean hydrogen produced will be used to generate further electricity through the existing heat and power plant.
Hexla founder Andy Yeow said: “Since early 2019, our team has been researching clean hydrogen production technologies around the world, so it is a great pleasure to be announcing what we expect to be the first of many successful deployments in conjunction with Levidian today. The Levidian LOOP, with its unique solid carbon by-product of high-quality graphene, is the standout technology – from both a thermal efficiency and marginal cost basis – in an extremely competitive field.”
“We are proud to be playing a key role in the scale-up of this truly game-changing technology and are focused on deploying it on an industrial scale to some of the most attractive hydrogen production markets in the world.”
Levidian CEO John Hartley added: “The Worthy Farm project is a great example of innovation within the agricultural sector and an important showcase of the vast flexibility and potential of our technology in decarbonising hard-to-abate industries, while unlocking new revenue streams.
“We’re delighted to be working with Hexla to help further our aims for this pioneering technology, including the development of our LOOP1000 unit, which will deliver industrial-scale levels of decarbonisation and place us amongst the best available carbon capture technology on the market.”
Hydrogen demand heats up
In the UK and around the world, the potential of green hydrogen is becoming an increasing focus of industry attention.
Meld Energy recently received development permission for a £250 million, 100MW green hydrogen production facility in Hull, while Equinor, Centrica, and SSE Thermal have joined forces to present plans for a low-carbon hydrogen hub in the North of England to Parliament.
Across the pond, the US Department of Energy (DoE) has allocated US$9.3 million of federal funding to hydrogen projects, primarily focusing on hydrogen systems that convert waste into clean hydrogen.
