Two technology pioneers in clean synthetic gas allied today in pursuit of perfecting, then selling hydrogen and other intermediate low-carbon fuels fabricated from waste.
EQTEC and Aberdonian consulting engineers Wood disclosed to investors a collaboration agreement to that end.
AIM-quoted, and with over half of its revenues coming from green projects, EQTEC builds its ‘advanced gasification’ plants in Europe, the US and Britain.
Sourced from as many as fifty feedstock types – from sludge, slurry and non-slurpable substitutes from municipal dustbins and forestry bark, chips and dust -, EQTEC’s ‘advanced gasification techniques’ produces outputs from crackers ranging in size from 1 MW to 30 MW.
The resulting low carbon synthesised vapour lends itself to many applications, including:
- generating electricity or heat
- reforming hydrogen
- producing synthetic natural gas through a process known as methanation or
- biofuels through the Fischer-Tropsch or gas-to-liquid processes.
Wood contributes experience in hydrogen and other fuels of low carbon intensity. Its proprietary VESTA methanation method frees up syngas producers like EQTEC to connect to existing gas networks, offering an alternative route to distribute low carbon syngas energy produced by EQTEC’s Advanced Gasification Technology.
In October 2020 the pair began six months of talks aimed at verifying technical compatibilities and the commercial potential of today’s link-up.
“Markets for syngas and hydrogen are maturing rapidly”, EQTEC’s chief operating officer Jeff Vander Linden commented. “Our capabilities in producing high-quality syngas have always positioned us well as a supplier of intermediate fuel for both applications.
“This agreement with Wood is an important start to our entry into these growth markets. Wood’s teams are among the very best at what they do, and we are excited to have the opportunity to work shoulder-to-shoulder with them to bring our waste-to-syngas capabilities to new solutions in more geographies”.
Wood’s vice president for technology Brian McCarthy responded: “By combining EQTEC’s and Wood’s breakthrough technologies and leveraging our combined capabilities, this collaboration will provide the opportunity to innovate and create solutions to support the path to net zero.”
By late afternoon, EQTEC’s share price had advanced just over 5%. Wood’s had dropped by approximately the same amount.
