London-based Rivan has raised $34 million in a funding spherical led by IQ Capital. Different contributors embody current investor Plural, new investor Fundomo, and angel buyers Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer at Hugging Face, Matt Clifford, co-founder of Entrepreneur First, and Markus Villig, CEO of Bolt. This brings Rivan’s complete funding to $46 million.
With the UK imports 42% of its natural gas, battery storage alone is inadequate to energy blast furnaces, and carbon credit can’t change the fuel these industries require. Harvey Hodd began Rivan in 2024 to sort out this drawback.
He introduced collectively a staff of greater than 30 engineers from electrical, chemical, and mechanical backgrounds and selected a vertically built-in method from the start. Rivan designs and builds all its techniques in-house at its London facility, which helps it management efficiency, prices, and deployment velocity.
The know-how works in three steps. First, photo voltaic vitality runs an electrolyser that makes inexperienced hydrogen from water. Subsequent, a direct air seize system makes use of calcium-looping chemistry to drag CO₂ from the air. Lastly, a Sabatier reactor combines hydrogen and CO₂ to supply artificial pure fuel that’s chemically similar to fossil fuel.
The method produces 99.9% pure SNG, which the corporate claims will be injected immediately into current pipelines with none modifications. The one inputs wanted are air and water, and the result’s a carbon-neutral fuel when burned.
Over the previous yr, Rivan moved from working a 100kW pilot at a former navy base in Wiltshire to constructing a 1MW plant, which is now the most important artificial pure fuel facility within the UK. Its primary design method is to make use of reasonably priced, broadly accessible elements to construct techniques that might not be essentially the most energy-efficient within the lab however are simple to scale and cost-effective in use.
Rivan’s opponents embody Germany’s Ineratec and Switzerland’s Synhelion, that are additionally engaged on artificial fuels however with totally different strategies. Rivan, compared, makes the whole lot in-house and makes use of solely solar energy.
With the brand new funding, Rivan will work with Wales & West Utilities to launch the UK’s first grid-connected business SNG undertaking. The cash may even assist construct Europe’s largest artificial pure fuel plant, a brand new 50,000-square-foot manufacturing web site in London, and develop the staff to greater than 100 folks.
