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A trend has emerged among a small group of climate tech founders who start out with their eyes fixed on space, and soon realize that their technology will yield much better results here on Earth.
Helen Mathieson and Luke Ness fit the bill. Matteson spent time at SpaceX, while Ness worked at Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Laboratory and Varda Aerospace Industries. The pair originally wanted to sell reactors to SpaceX that could convert carbon dioxide into methane for use on Mars. Today, they are building them to replace natural gas pumped from underground.
their company, General galaxyThe company, which emerged from stealth last April, has built an experimental system that can produce 2,000 liters of methane per day. Neise, CTO at General Galactic, told TechCrunch that he expects that number to rise as the company replaces off-the-shelf components with in-house designed versions.
“We think this is a big missing piece in the energy mix right now,” said Matteson, the startup’s CEO. “Being able to own our own supply chains, being able to fully control all parameters, and challenging requirements between components, all opens up some real elegance in the engineering solution.”
On a commercial scale, the company’s reactors will be assembled using mass production techniques. It’s a contrast to the way most petrochemical and energy facilities are built today.
General Galactic is focused on methane production. However, Matteson said the company is not necessarily looking to replace fuel with heat and power. “Those are generally moving toward electricity,” he said. Instead, it intends to sell its methane to companies that use it as an ingredient or to power a process, such as in the manufacture of chemicals or plastics.
The company isn’t completely ruling out transportation either. Matteson hinted that General Galactic is working on producing other hydrocarbons that can be used in transportation, such as jet fuel. “Stay tuned,” he said.
Investors are betting on General Galactic
The startup plans to deploy its first units in 2025. To achieve this milestone, it recently raised an $8 million seed round co-led by Harpoon Ventures and Refactor Capital with participation from BoxGroup, Climate Capital, Impact First, Pathbreaker, and Plug and Play. And Seraphim.
General Galactic hopes its modules can integrate into existing infrastructure, accelerating their adoption compared to other fuels such as hydrogen.
General Galactic’s biggest competition probably won’t come from hydrogen, but from startups like Oxylus Energy, Aerleum, and SpiralWave, which are all working on producing green methanol. Methanol has a few things going for it: it’s an essential ingredient in many fuels and petrochemicals and it’s a liquid at room temperature.
Methane does not liquefy down to -258 degrees Fahrenheit, and is a powerful greenhouse gas, 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Natural gas infrastructure is suspected to be leaky Big contributor to climate change. Unless General Galactic can eliminate leaks at the point of production and downstream, reliance on methane could undermine its claims of carbon neutrality.
However, compared to fossil fuels, methane produced using renewable electricity will have a lower carbon footprint. Liquid fuels targeting industries such as aviation and shipping will be a more important target from a climate perspective; It could be a good business bet too, as decarbonising these sectors using batteries or hydrogen is expensive. The next pivot may be where the real opportunity lies for General Galactic.
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