Elec­tro­chaea suc­cess­fully scales up to 10MWe with EIC Accel­er­at­or Pro­gram sup­port and applies new plant design for first com­mer­cial pro­ject in Denmark

The com­pany has developed a tech­no­logy to pro­duce syn­thet­ic meth­ane which is vir­tu­ally CO2-neut­ral, can replace fossil nat­ur­al gas and can be stored and trans­por­ted in the exist­ing gas grid

Electrochaea´s bioreactor at a pilot plant in Denmark
Electrochaea´s bioreactor at a pilot plant in Denmark © Electrocha

After three years, Elec­tro­chaea, a lead­ing power-to-gas com­pany, has suc­cess­fully com­pleted the EIC Accel­er­at­or pro­gram, which is co-fun­ded by the European Innov­a­tion Coun­cil (EIC) and sup­ports innov­at­ive com­pan­ies in bring­ing their products and ser­vices to mar­ket. In 2021, more than 2,000 European com­pan­ies applied for fund­ing. Elec­tro­chaea has been one of only 64 start-ups and SMEs selec­ted based on their impress­ive projects. 

The com­pany has developed a tech­no­logy to pro­duce syn­thet­ic meth­ane. As an energy source, syn­thet­ic meth­ane is vir­tu­ally CO2-neut­ral, can replace fossil nat­ur­al gas and can be stored and trans­por­ted in the exist­ing gas grid. To pro­duce it, Elec­tro­chaea uses archaea, bil­lion-year-old microor­gan­isms, that con­vert green hydro­gen and recycled CO2 into syn­thet­ic meth­ane in bioreactors. 

With the fund­ing provided, a grant of €2.485 mil­lion and an equity invest­ment of €14.975 mil­lion, Elec­tro­chaea has been able to scale up its bio­meth­ana­tion tech­no­logy to indus­tri­al scale with an arche­type design of 10 MWe. The imple­ment­a­tion will take place dir­ectly with­in the BioCat-Roslev pro­ject in Den­mark. There, the new arche­type design will be integ­rated into the exist­ing oper­a­tion of a bio­gas upgrad­ing and grid-injec­tion plant. The Dan­ish Energy Agency also sub­sid­ized the pro­ject with €9.5 mil­lion to expand hydro­gen production. 

With fund­ing from the EIC Accel­er­at­or pro­gram, Elec­tro­chaea has been able to optim­ize the plant design mak­ing it more effi­cient and cost-effect­ive. Cus­tom­ers will bene­fit from sig­ni­fic­antly reduced CAPEX and OPEX of the bio­meth­ana­tion tech­no­logy. Dur­ing the fund­ing peri­od, Elec­tro­chaea also made sig­ni­fic­ant over­all pro­gress in the approv­al pro­cess, tech­no­logy integ­ra­tion and busi­ness mod­el optim­iz­a­tion for the BioCat Roslev project. 

“The EIC Accel­er­at­or pro­gram has been a fant­ast­ic oppor­tun­ity for Elec­tro­chaea to scale up our tech­no­logy to a com­mer­cially rel­ev­ant size and to devel­op the BioCat Roslev pro­ject based on a new and more effi­cient design,” said Dr Dor­is Hafen­bradl, CTO and Man­aging Dir­ect­or of Elec­tro­chaea. ​“In addi­tion to oth­er bene­fits such as net­work­ing and investor events, we bene­fit most from the EIC Fun­d’s long-term invest­ment in Elec­tro­chaea. Our par­ti­cip­a­tion in the EIC Accel­er­at­or and the pro­gress we have made through this fund­ing demon­strates Elec­tro­chae­a’s strong abil­ity to devel­op innov­at­ive and sus­tain­able solu­tions for the energy sector.” 

With the com­ple­tion of the pro­gram, Elec­tro­chaea is well posi­tioned to com­mer­cial­ize its tech­no­logy and sig­ni­fic­antly advance the much-needed pro­duc­tion of renew­able methane. 

About Elec­tro­chaea

Elec­tro­chaea provides tech­no­logy to pro­duce syn­thet­ic meth­ane, a renew­able fuel that replaces fossil nat­ur­al gas and can be stored and trans­por­ted in the exist­ing gas grid. Elec­tro­chae­a’s pat­en­ted pro­cess helps com­bat cli­mate change by using CO2 to gen­er­ate a renew­able energy source and provides a solu­tion for long-term stor­age of inter­mit­tent renew­able energy. Indus­tri­al-scale pilot plants have already been com­mis­sioned in the U.S., Switzer­land, and Den­mark. Elec­tro­chaea is headquartered in Munich, Ger­many, with offices in Den­mark and the United States. Elec­tro­chaea is one of the Glob­al Cleantech 100 List companies. 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 10101027

Source

Electrochaea, press release, 2024-08-26.

Supplier

Electrochaea GmbH
European Innovation Council

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