Leading artists and music fans will soon be descending on Worthy Farm in Somerset for the annual Glastonbury Festival (June 26-30).
The 54-year-old festival is keen to show it is in tune with sustainability under a ‘Love Worthy Farm – Leave No Trace’ slogan – and this year energy consumption is as much in the spotlight as discarded litter and plastic.
Clean hydrogen developer Hexla and British climate tech firm Levidian have joined forces to bring its LOOP technology to the farm, in what it claims is a ‘world first’ example of carbon negative hydrogen production from biomethane.
Worthy Farm currently produces power using an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant that turns tens of thousands of tonnes of cow slurry and waste silage into energy.
The LOOP technology will allow the farm to capture the carbon from some of the biomethane produced as part of this process and turn it into super-material graphene and clean hydrogen, which will be used to generate electricity through the existing combined heat and power plant.
The installation is expected to deliver a saving of up to 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent each year, while the graphene will be sold as an additive to boost the performance of products as wide-ranging as batteries, concrete and plastics.
Hexla is providing funding to support the development of an industrial-scale LOOP1000 that aims to deliver the lowest cost clean hydrogen over the lifetime of the plant as a result of the graphene production.
Hexla and Levidian have also agreed a Collaboration Agreement under which Hexla will become a global deployment partner of the LOOP technology with plans to deliver up to 300 LOOP1000 units that will drive down emissions.
Hexla Founder Andy Yeow said its team has been researching clean hydrogen production technologies since early 2019, and the Levidian LOOP is a ‘standout technology’ from thermal efficiency and marginal cost basis perspectives.
John Hartley, Levidian CEO, said, “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.”
