Hydrogen startup C-Zero has raised $5 million of an $18 million funding round, according to an SEC filing.
The company is developing a way to extract hydrogen from methane without emitting carbon dioxide. The resulting hydrogen can now be used in a variety of industries, including ammonia and petrochemical production, and may soon be available in others, such as transportation and steelmaking. Solid carbon waste could potentially be reused in everything from asphalt to lithium-ion batteries.
C-Zero has raised $34 million in 2022 at a post-money valuation of $124 million, according to PitchBook data. The smaller target for this new round suggests the company is being realistic about its future after raising a large amount during the pandemic.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The process C-Zero employs is known as methane pyrolysis: C-Zero's reactor heats natural gas in the presence of a proprietary catalyst, breaking the chemical bond between the central carbon atom of the methane molecule and hydrogen.
By using readily available natural gas as a feedstock, C-Zero hopes to produce emission-free hydrogen at a lower cost than other green hydrogen startups, which typically rely on expensive electrolyzers powered by low-cost renewable energy from wind and solar.
By leveraging existing natural gas infrastructure, methane pyrolysis is also a natural fit for petrochemical plants, which currently use natural gas throughout their operations and also require large amounts of hydrogen to produce a variety of chemicals.
The possibility of selling low-cost, emission-free hydrogen to existing large-scale customers has spurred a flurry of startup activity in the space, many of which use the pyrolysis of methane, a process also used by competing startups including Modern Hydrogen, Molten Industries and ReCarbon.