Rimere clean hydrogen tech gets millions in funding from Clean Energy
February 14, 2024The climate solutions company has received $10 million in strategy investment.
Rimere, a California-based company, with proprietary plasma technology that produces clean hydrogen and graphene, announced the closing of a $10 million strategic investment from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (NASDAQ: CLNE), the largest provider of renewable natural gas for the US transportation market.
The funding will speed up the development of two Rimere devices.
The $10 million in funding will reportedly help to accelerate the development and field testing of Rimere’s Reformer and Mitigator. These two independent devices have been designed to reduce climate change emissions and allow the use of natural gas to fast-track the transition to a clean hydrogen future.
Each device serves an important function. Without creating any carbon emissions, the Reformer can turn natural gas into clean hydrogen and high-quality graphene using proprietary sequential hybrid plasma technology. When hydrogen is generated from renewable natural gas feedstock, the Reformer can achieve a negative carbon-intensity rating, making it significantly lower-emission than renewable electrolysis methods.
As for the Mitigator, it is a plasma thermal oxidizer that helps with fugitive methane emissions by lowering their greenhouse gas (GHG) potency. The device is a low-cost solution for abating methane emissions, especially those that escape from compressors and pneumatic controllers located along natural gas pipelines.
Clean hydrogen can help to change the long-term outlook for natural gas.
“The world continues to consume more natural gas annually for everything from producing electricity to heating our homes,” said Rimere CEO Michell Pratt.
However, as Pratt notes, despite natural gas being a globally abundant and affordable low-carbon resource, it can pose GHG emissions challenges when storing it, transmitting it through pipelines and other operations.
“Rimere’s technology not only cleans up the infrastructure but also repositions and revalues natural gas reserves as a vital solution for climate change and our clean energy future,” Pratt explained.
It does this by generating both zero-emission clean hydrogen and “valuable graphene”.
Decarbonizing natural gas infrastructure.
Rimere’s Reformer and Mitigator deliver important solutions, leveraging a cleaner extensive infrastructure to offer clean hydrogen and graphene to end use customers.
Commenting on the investment announcement, Clean Energy president and CEO Andrew J. Littlefair said, “…recently, we saw the opportunity of turning fugitive greenhouse gas emissions at agricultural facilities into an ultra-clean transportation fuel. It is a logical next step to make this investment in Rimere which is tackling the challenges facing the natural gas and hydrogen industries to produce cost-effective solutions without emissions.”
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