Sakowin (also known as Sakowin Green Energy), a French cleantech startup founded in 2017, develops plasma pyrolysis technology that converts natural gas to clean hydrogen and solid carbon with zero CO₂ emission. The company offers compact, modular, and scalable systems that can be integrated into existing industrial and gas infrastructures for on-site and on-demand hydrogen production.
Challenges: hydrogen fuel
The majority of the world's hydrogen (over 60 million tons) is currently produced via steam methane reforming (SMR) process, which requires a significant amount of energy input and emits a substantial amount of CO₂. The SMR process emits between 5 and 9 tons of CO₂ per ton of hydrogen (H₂) produced.
In addition, hydrogen produced in centralized industrial plants must travel a great distance to reach its users. Hydrogen transportation involves either pressurizing the hydrogen gas above 300 pounds per square inch gage (psig) or cryogenically cooling the hydrogen gas to -253 ºC to create liquid hydrogen. The International Energy Agency estimates that the costs of hydrogen transportation could be three times that of its production.
Sakowin Technology
Sakowin develops an on-site hydrogen gas production system based on the microwave plasma technology that converts methane into cost-competitive hydrogen gas and solid carbon without emitting CO₂. The system produces hydrogen while consuming five times less electricity than an electrolyzer. The hydrogen produced on-site can be supplied directly to fuel cell vehicles, combustion engines, and energy conversion devices.
Sakowin hydrogen
The diagram below depicts the system of microwave plasma pyrolysis of methane.
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