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Spark Cleantech announced this Thursday, October 12, that it had closed its funding round, with €1.4 million contributed by Asterion Ventures and €2.6 million in grants and loans, notably from Bpifrance through the i-Lab competition.
This funding will notably enable them to strengthen their team, invest in R&D, build their first demonstrator, and initiate an initial industrialization phase.
Founded in 2022, Spark Cleantech developed its technology within an incubation program at the laboratories of CentraleSupélec and the CNRS - National Center for Scientific Research, notably in collaboration with Christophe Laux and the EM2C laboratory. "This period allowed us to launch the initial developments for the first demonstrator, which we are now realizing and finalizing with this funding," comments Erwan Pannier ✊🌱 Pannier, CTO and co-founder.
Spark Cleantech's ambition is to offer industrial players an alternative, decarbonized solution to fossil fuel combustion.
However, to date, hydrogen is still predominantly produced by steam reforming, which generates significant CO2 emissions; or by water electrolysis, which involves high electricity consumption.
The solution developed by Spark represents a promising and doubly virtuous third path: it consumes up to five times less electricity than electrolysis and emits no CO2; all the carbon is sequestered in solid form.
Spark, a response to the challenges of industrial decarbonization
Spark's nano-pulsed plasmalysis process, developed within CentraleSupelec laboratories, dissociates methane into hydrogen and extracted carbon in solid form, all with low electricity consumption. Spark thus paves the way for the competitive production of decarbonized hydrogen.
100% of the input is valorized in the Spark process: hydrogen as energy and carbon as a material, which significantly optimizes the overall economic viability. This therefore addresses both the issue of hydrogen production cost and that of a 'greener' hydrogen.
Globally, an entirely new industrial sector of plasmalysis is emerging, and strengthens the use of hydrogen as a competitive alternative to fossil fuel combustion. Spark's nano-pulsed plasmalysis process is the new generation of this technology, and is set to play a role in France's reindustrialization policy.
The startup's goal is to deploy decentralized hydrogen and solid carbon production modules on a large scale, with a first commercial unit targeted for 2025.
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