Worthy Farm in Somerset, home of the Glastonbury Festival, is set to upgrade its on-site power generation with hydrogen developer Hexla and climate tech firm Levidian’s LOOP technology.
Worthy Farm currently produces power using an anaerobic digestion plant that turns thousands of tonnes of cow slurry and waste silage into biomethane. 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 graphene and hydrogen, which will be used to generate electricity through the existing combined heat and power plant.
Hexla is providing funding to support the development of an industrial-scale LOOP1000. It says producing the graphene will mean the plant can deliver low-cost hydrogen, because the graphene will be sold as an additive to boost the performance of products such as batteries, concrete and plastics.
Hexla and Levidian have also agreed a Collaboration Agreement, under which Hexla will become a global deployment partner of the LOOP technology. They have plans to deliver up to 300 LOOP1000 units.