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University of South Wales: Working with Industry on Cleaner Energy

The University of South Wales is working with industry giant Tata Steel to help them reduce their energy use and make their business more environmentally and economically sustainable.

The University has researched and helped to implement a system which takes hydrogen gas produced using electricity and waste carbon dioxide and uses a biological system to create methane gas. This energy can then be put back into the grid, using renewable energy generators.

In Short:

  • Tata Steel currently uses around £13 million worth of energy each year- this system will allow then to recycle some of this.
  • Recycling just 10% of the carbon released by energy and industrial companies each year could represent a saving of £1 billion a year.

Marc Chicuta, Director or Product and Process Development, Tata Steel said “We have to be the leading edge, trying something new, and the biomethanation project is a way of using waste gases in a new way rather than just exhausting them into the atmosphere.”
“A company as big as Tata Steel can’t do everything themselves, so using the wealth of ability within the University of South Wales, we’re able to more than we could on our own and develop new processes and products much more efficiently.”