An enormous amount of energy used on our planet goes to create heat, and not only that, but much of that energy is wasted and by-products like CO₂ blown into the atmosphere. Modern Electron could change that with a new system that captures emissions and produces clean hydrogen, right inside a home or building, and $30 million in Series B funding will fuel its next push to become a household name.

Natural gas is the most common way homes, apartment buildings, and offices generate heat. It’s a fairly simple process: you burn the gas, it produces heat, carbon dioxide and water. The heat is channeled, the other elements are evacuated.

But as Modern Electron co-founder and CEO Tony Pan explained, it can be convenient, but it’s not ideal (although admittedly it’s much better than oil and coal ).

“If you’re burning fuel just for heat, from a physical point of view it’s very wasteful,” he said. “If you were burning natural gas, coal or biofuels in a power plant, you would produce electricity first, because electricity has about four times the value of heat. The reason we don’t is that you can’t reduce the power plant technology to the level of a commercial or residential building. This loss has been known for a century – if you can generate heat and electricity, it’s like a holy grail.

By combining two new technologies, however, Pan hopes to achieve something like this holy grail.

The first technology is called a thermionic converter, and it’s what Seattle-area Modern Electron made their first pitch on. The size of a soda can, it is a compact and efficient heat-to-energy converter that takes the heat produced by an oven and converts it into electricity.

The second, which is still in development but about to debut, is what they call the Modern Electron Reserve, which rather than burning natural gas – which is mostly CH₄, or methane – reduces it to solid carbon (as graphite) and hydrogen gas. The gas is passed to the furnace to be burned and converted into both heat and energy, while the graphite is collected for disposal or reuse.

You may be, like me, suspicious that introducing a number of conversions and processes here would have a serious effect on the efficiency of the whole system, thermodynamically speaking.

“There’s no free lunch, that’s true,” Pan said. “In order not to release CO₂ in the atmosphere, we don’t have this exothermic reaction [i.e. burning the gas]. But if you use it for heat and electricity, since electricity is more valuable than heat, you can even get out of it economically. You kind of subsidize the extra cost.

In fact, users should see no increase in gas consumption – energy that would normally escape your home in other forms stays in the system as your electricity needs should be met easily.

As for the carbon produced by this reaction, it requires a kind of change of mentality. Right now, the heat is a kind of magic. You turn it on, the house warms up, and you get a bill. But if you’re using a system equipped with Modern Electron’s technology, you’re going to end up with a kilogram or two of graphite – pure carbon dust – every day. (That’s about a liter, or a full scoop.)

“Disgusting”, you might be thinking, “I just have to throw this stuff away?” Well, the thing is, you threw it all the time – into the atmosphere. Pan called it the “Giant Dump in the Sky”, and it’s where we put our carbon from the very beginning. Now you can just see your carbon footprint more easily (but try not to spill it).

This pure carbon dust is not what you would call toxic, being essentially pencil shavings. As a solid, it’s actually an efficient sequestration of carbon for a few hundred or thousand years, even if it’s somewhere in a landfill. Additionally, facilities like offices or hospitals that use a lot of heat would likely produce enough carbon solids, and in places convenient enough for collection, that they could be sold to industries that can use it.

However, Modern Electron isn’t looking to replace your entire heat and power stack; For one thing, Pan pointed out, in the summer, when a house needs very little heat, it will generate a correspondingly small amount of energy. (Incidentally, the system would require modification of most electrical systems for grid flexibility, but not an overhaul.)

This is the decarbonization of the heat you To do use, and hopes to integrate with existing HVAC providers rather than reinventing the wheel. Its thermionic converter fits perfectly without bulk increase, and the gas-hydrogen converter won’t take up more space than any other small device. Pan said there is a huge opportunity to decarbonize not just homes, but also buildings that are big enough to be big gas consumers, but not big enough to use large-scale industrial infrastructure or even battery technology. fuel like Bloom’s. This includes medium sized industry with high heat requirements and things like steam generation.

The timing is right – the EU will soon require new furnaces and boilers to be hydrogen-compatible (and old ones can be converted quite easily), but there’s no sign of a global fuel economy. hydrogen on the scale that would be needed to switch from natural gas. Converting it on-site with little or no loss, and considerable benefits, could be the new default solution for heating hundreds of millions of buildings. It’s not a bad place to start, which is likely why the company has attracted continued investment.

The $30 million B round had new investors in At One Ventures, the fund co-founded by former Google X executive Tom Chi, along with Extantia, Starlight Ventures, Valo Ventures, Irongrey and Wieland Group. Previous investors Bill Gates (the man, not the foundation) and MetaPlanet also continued and expanded their investment.

The funding will go towards continued product development and upcoming pilot tests with major HVAC OEMs, which Pan says should be operational next year. They are also hiring, he added, especially in the Seattle area.

If Modern Electron’s technology becomes mainstream and the trend away from oil and coal continues, it could make natural gas a much cleaner and more viable (and already very present in the world) complement to renewables. such as solar and wind.