seeing gold

Sustainable biotech company to test hydrogen production technology with global chemicals leader

Two Houston companies have partnered up to explore gold hydrogen technology. Photo via cemvita.com

Two Houston-area companies have announced a strategic partnership to test a unique hydrogen production technology.

The Woodlands-based ChampionX Corporation (NASDAQ: CHX) and Gold H2 Inc. entered into the partnership on November 9. GH2, a subsidiary of Houston-based Cemvita, provides tailored subsurface microbiology solutions by harnessing the power of microorganisms to enable in-situ hydrogen production from depleted oil and gas wells.

Created with carbon neutrality, the gold hydrogen costs less to create and is more sustainable than its alternatives. Cemvita, a sustainability-focused biotech company, has already seen success from its technology. After successfully completing a pilot test of gold hydrogen in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas, Cemvita raised an undisclosed amount of funding through its Gold H2 spin-out.

ChampionX, a global equipment and services provider for the oil and gas industry, has a suite of services and chemical technologies for optimizing production for reservoirs.

"Could not have asked for a better partner than ChampionX, Victor Keasler and Deric Bryant to helps us bring the Gold H2 technology to life. They are the industry leader in oilfield chemistry and microbiology and we are beyond excited to have them as a collaborator," Cemvita Co-founder and CEO Moji Karimi writes in a LinkedIn post. "I talk about creating a natural resource company of the future and our work at Gold H2 is a perfect example. To learn from subsurface biology and effectively turn the reservoir into a natural bioreactor and proactively biomanufacture end products of interest, integrating upstream with downstream."

Cemvita has had a flurry of corporate partnership announcements this year. In September, the company announced a 20-year off-take agreement with United to provide up to 50 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel a year across 20 years.

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A View From HETI

Ten climatetech startups were named most-promising at this annual Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum. Photo courtesy Rice Alliance.

Investors at the Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum have named the 10 most-promising startups among the group of 100 clean tech companies participating in the event.

The 22nd annual event was held yesterday, Sept. 18, at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and was part of the second Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week.

The most-promising startups will receive $7,000 in in-kind legal services from Baker Botts.

The 10 most-promising companies included:

  • Houston-based Xplorobot, which has developed laser gas imaging technology for the first handheld methane detection device approved by the EPA as an alternative test method
  • Seattle-based Badwater Alchemy, a desalination company that uses nano materials to purify saline water at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods
  • San Francisco-based Ammobia, which is developing a clean ammonia production process
  • Illinois-based Celadyne Technologies, which is building hydrogen for industrial decarbonization with durable and efficient fuel cells and electrolyzers
  • Massachusetts-based MacroCycle Technologies, which converts plastic waste in the form of bottles, food trays and polyester textiles into virgin-grade mPET resin
  • Yorkshire, England-based AtoMe, a global developer of zero-carbon fertiliser products
  • Colorado-based Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS) Energy, a renewable energy semiconductor manufacturing company
  • North Carolina-based Lukera Energy, which is converting waste methane into high-value fuel
  • Midland, Texas-based AI Driller, a company that uses AI and machine learning to enable remote operations and provide historical drilling data for survey management, anti-collision monitoring and iob reporting
  • New York-based Fast Metals Inc., which has developed a chemical process to extract valuable metals from complex toxic mine tailings that is capable of producing iron, aluminum, scandium, titanium and other rare earth elements using industrial waste and waste CO2 as inputs

Arculus Solutions won the People's Choice Award. The New Jersey-based company retrofits natural gas pipelines for safe hydrogen transportation. It also won Track A: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, Buildings, Water, & Other Energy Solutions at the Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition during CERAWeek earlier this year.

The 100 energy technology ventures selected to participate in the forum were named earlier this year. See the full list here.

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