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Electrochaea's main employees are small.

Tiny.

About half a micrometer to a micrometer in diameter and invisible to the naked eye.

And yet without her everything would come to a standstill in the start-up from Planegg in Bavaria.

The employees are called archaea.

The microorganisms are old.

Biologists assume that archaea, along with bacteria, were the first living things on earth.

They do not even have a nucleus, but they can do something that more highly developed organisms are not capable of.

Due to their metabolic properties, archaea are able to convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methane.

The microorganism thus offers the perfect prerequisite for converting excess energy, for example from wind turbines, into storable form.

Electrochaea biogas

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According to Electrochaea, this is how it works: In a first step, water is separated into oxygen and hydrogen using the excess electricity.

This process is called electrolysis.

In the second step, the archaea are used: the hydrogen is combined with carbon dioxide, the microbe then functions as a so-called biocatalyst and converts both substances into methane.

This is how the microorganisms called archaea look enlarged

Source: Electrochaea / Andreas Klingl

Because Electrochaea's biogas, unlike natural gas, is not obtained by decomposing organic waste, it is not a fossil fuel, but it can be used as well.

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The biogas can either be stored or immediately fed into the natural gas networks of municipal utilities or other operators.

The start-up has shown that this works with test facilities in the USA, Switzerland and Denmark.

Electrochaea makes money by providing the technology

Electrochaea was founded in 2014 by CEO Mich Hein and CTO Doris Hafenbradl.

Investors include Munich Venture Partners, Btov, Sirius Venture Partners, KfW, Energie 360 ​​°, Nidus Partners with Focus First and Caliza Holding.

The gas storage operator Storengy has also been on board since 2019.

The donors promise a lot.

"The technology is ready for use, the potential is enormous," estimates the company.

Systems with a capacity of one gigawatt could be built by 2025.

In this way, more than 400 million cubic meters of renewable methane could be produced every year.

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However, the Bavarian start-up does not want to do it itself, as the founders say.

Instead, Electrochaea earns money with the provision of the technology and with revenue from licenses for the sale of gas, heat and system services by the respective plant operator.

Electrochaea in the list of the top 100 cleantechs

Electrochaea's technology was not only awarded the Swiss Watt d'Or energy prize and was included in the global list of the top 100 cleantechs by the renowned Cleantech Group from San Francisco.

The EU Innovation Council also announced last year that it would invest 17.5 million euros in the company's power-to-methane technology.

The start-up intends to use the money to upscale its technology from previous pilot projects to systems on a commercial scale.

30 people work for the start-up in Germany, Denmark and the USA and are supposed to help.

Incidentally, we have written down the tools that the team uses to organize itself.

In January of this year, Electrochaea founded a subsidiary in California.

The team there is supposed to help market the technology in the US.

The company expects big business from the high energy demand in the country if there is a switch to a clean energy industry - and archaea should then be involved.