Tulum Power rediscovered a forgotten hydrogen tech and used it to boost $27M

It was a mistake that was forward of its time.

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

The staff had inadvertently created what’s often 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.

“Again then, no person cared as a result of no person cared about methane pyrolysis, about hydrogen,” Massimiliano Pieri, CEO of Tulum Power, instructed TechCrunch. The experiment was largely forgotten for the following 20 years.

However a few years in the past, buyers 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 buyers didn’t should look far. “Somebody within the firm realized, ‘However we have already got that. We have now this discovery,’” Pieri mentioned.

So the conglomerate dusted off the thought and spun out Tulum to show the unintended discovery right into a viable enterprise. Not too long ago, Tulum closed an oversubscribed $27 million seed spherical led by TDK Ventures and CDP Enterprise Capital, the corporate completely instructed TechCrunch. Doral Power-Tech Ventures, MITO Tech Ventures, and TechEnergy Ventures participated.

Tulum isn’t the one startup pursuing methane pyrolysis as a strategy to produce hydrogen. Fashionable Hydrogen, Molten Industries, and Monolith are amongst Tulum’s rivals. The response has attracted consideration for its potential to supply hydrogen from low cost, extensively obtainable pure fuel with none carbon dioxide emissions. In pyrolysis, methane is damaged down within the absence of oxygen, the one merchandise are hydrogen fuel and a mud of strong 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 rivals require. In its use of the electrical arc furnace, Tulum can be utilizing a extensively used — if modified — know-how.

“This provides you a giant head begin,” Pieri mentioned.

Tulum will use the seed funding to construct a pilot plant in Mexico alongside an current Techint Group metal plant. If all goes properly, the metal plant may purchase hydrogen and carbon immediately from Tulum to be used in its operations.

Pieri mentioned 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 fuel are each low cost. At that value, it’s simply 50 cents greater than most hydrogen produced from pure fuel at this time, and it considerably undercuts among 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.