Start-Up’s Plan To Convert Food Waste Into Green Fuel
The title of this post, is the same as that, of this article in The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
Dark Green wants to build biogas production plants to supply local authorities and businesses
These three paragraphs give some detail to the plans.
A Nottingham-based start-up wants to become the first company to build a fleet of plants that would convert food waste into green energy in urban centres across Britain, producing an alternative fuel for businesses and local authorities attempting to shrink their carbon footprints.
Dark Green expects to submit planning applications for six biogas production plants, including one each in Birmingham and Huddersfield, with a further six in the pipeline.
The facilities, which are more usually sited on farms, will be capable of handling 60,000 tonnes of organic waste a year, saving the same amount of carbon dioxide as taking 65,000 cars off the road, the company estimates, and will produce seven megawatts of energy, capable of powering around 6,000 homes.
I have a feeling that Dark Green fit a theme, that this blog has been following for a couple of years now.
I have been commenting on a company called HiiROC.
- I first became aware of HiiROC and their new method of generating hydrogen in this news item from Centrica, which is entitled Centrica And HiiROC To Inject Hydrogen At Brigg Gas-Fired Power Station In UK First Project.
- HiiROC is a Hull-based startup-up, that is backed by Cemex, Centrica, Hyundai, Kia, Siemens and other big names.
- HiiROC can take any hydrocarbon gas from something like chemical plant off-gas, through biomethane to natural gas and split it into hydrogen and carbon black.
- HiiROC call their process thermal plasma electrolysis.
- The carbon black has uses in the manufacture of tyres and rubber products, anodes for lithium-ion batteries and other materials and in agriculture, it can be used to improve soils.
HiiROC claim that their method uses a fifth of the energy to create hydrogen, than electrolysis.
It looks to me that if you pipe Dark Green’s methane-rich gas into one of HiiROC’s thermal plasma electrolysers, you’ll get two valuable products; hydrogen and carbon black.
Centrica have also been active with an energy storage company called Highview Power recently, in the company of Goldman Sachs and Rio Tinto.
Centrica seem to have a cunning plan!
Is Dark Green going to be part of it?