From AgFunderNews, June 25:
Bluemethane unveils novel tech to capture methane from water
When it comes to methane emissions, most people think of oil, coal, gas and livestock, says Louise Parlons Bentata, co-founder and CEO at UK-based startup Bluemethane. What they often don’t know about, she says, is water.
“Methane emissions from water are an environmental catastrophe but also a waste of valuable resources that can be turned into clean energy. Human sources of methane emissions from water such as rice cultivation, waste streams and reservoirs emit more than three billion tons of CO2e per year from methane emissions, but awareness is really low.”
Founded in 2021 by Parlons Bentata and engineer Nestor Rueda-Vallejo, Bluemethane is part of the fifth cohort of the AgFunder GROW Impact Accelerator [Disclosure: AgFunder is AgFunderNews’ parent company] and is on a mission to remove methane from a variety of water sources, starting with wastewater treatment in the UK, where utility companies have committed to achieve net-zero status by 2030.
AgFunderNews (AFN) caught up with Parlons Bentata (LPB) to discuss how methane is released from water sources, how to monetize methane reduction, and the challenges around raising capital to address a market opportunity that is not yet well understood.
AFN: Give us the origins story of Bluemethane…
LPB: I began my career at L’Oreal [as a brand manager], did an MBA, and then worked at Johnson & Johnson [as a global marketing manager]. I then ran my own strategy company for about 10 years until I started working with an engineering company [a client] that was making very highly valuable things that were ending up in landfill.
I said, ‘Can we do a project [to tackle this problem]?’ And he said ‘No, you’re not qualified.’ I said, ‘Well what do you need to be qualified?’ He said ‘I don’t know, but I can tell you that you’re not qualified to do it.’ So he brought in this lady to take on the project, and I said to her, ‘What makes you qualified?’ And she said, ‘I’ve just got back from Cambridge [University], where I’ve done a postgrad [course] in sustainable business leadership. So I said, ‘All right, I’ll sign up for that then.’
So just as COVID began [in 2020], I signed up for this nine-month course in the evenings while still managing my work [the day job] and three children, and then in 2021, I signed up for a climate technology fellowship program called On Deck, not knowing what I really wanted, but knowing I wanted to do something new.
On the first day [in March 2021], I met my cofounder Nestor, an engineer who was looking at how hydropower reservoirs emitted billion tons of greenhouse gases. By May/June, we gave up the things that paid our mortgages, having never met in person. We met for the first time in September 2021 and joined [the] Carbon13 [climate accelerator].
AFN: Why is there methane in water and when can it cause a problem?
LPB: Methane is produced through the decomposition of organic matter [by microbes] in water in low oxygen conditions. So think of a sewer, which is an almost entirely anoxic [oxygen-free] environment. Rice cultivation also releases methane because farmers often keep rice paddies flooded, which creates anaerobic conditions that allow microbes to feed on organic matter and produce methane.
There are quite a lot of academic papers on this, but nothing compared to all the stuff written on capturing CO2; but it’s a really big problem. At least 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent are coming from just the anthropogenic water bodies like reservoirs or rice paddies, and sewage and things like that.
AFN: Why doesn’t the ocean release a bunch of methane gas?
LPB: It’s actually far less of an issue than other water sources because the water is moving [methane released in the deep ocean can be diluted and dispersed by ocean currents over vast areas, making it less likely to reach saturation and escape into the atmosphere], and more oxygen is being circulated [inhibiting the activity of anaerobic microbes that produce methane].
AFN: What determines whether the methane stays in the water or is released into the atmosphere?
LPB: It is released in three different ways. The first is bubbling. You’ll see this in shallow water where methane forms bubbles that rise and burst at the surface as the pressure from overlying water is not sufficient to keep the methane dissolved. In a reservoir with a lot of methane, for example, you’ll see bubbles near the edge, but not in the deep parts.
Then second there’s diffusion, where the molecules transfer at the surface to become gas when the concentration of methane in the water is higher than in the air.
And then there’s degassing where there’s a sudden change of pressure that causes dissolved gases to be released rapidly, so imagine a large volume of water passing through a dam wall. Suddenly there’s no weight in the water above it, it goes through and you see loads of bubbles....
....MUCH MORE
