United Utilities has secured £9.5 million in funding from Ofwat’s sixth Water Breakthrough Challenge to scale up its biogas‑to‑graphene technology and demonstrate how wastewater can become a major source of advanced materials and clean hydrogen. The company will build on a world‑first trial to produce clean hydrogen and graphene from sewage‑derived biogas, aiming to move from pilot to full‑scale deployment and open new commercial routes for graphene in construction and energy storage.
Having already proven the concept with technology partner Levidian, United Utilities will now install a larger unit designed to produce roughly three times more sustainable hydrogen and graphene than the earlier demonstration system. The project is one of 19 winners in Ofwat’s latest Water Breakthrough Challenge round, with United Utilities leading two projects and partnering on nine more, all focused on turning wastewater streams into valuable resources.
United Utilities will work with several major UK water companies - Severn Trent Water, Anglian Water Services, South West Water, Wessex Water, Yorkshire Water and Scottish Water - to explore how the technology could be adopted across the wider water sector. The long‑term ambition is to deploy this approach at wastewater sites nationwide, linking decarbonization of treatment operations with local production of graphene and low‑carbon hydrogen.
The graphene produced from biogas will feed directly into commercial use‑cases through a group of specialist partners. Manchester‑based Concretene will use the graphene in an admixture for lower‑carbon concrete, an application that has already shown promise in reducing cement content while maintaining or improving performance.
Carbon Ion Energy will test the graphene in the manufacture of their supercapacitors, targeting improved energy storage performance. At the same time, Tarmac will explore additional uses for the graphene in construction materials, while Merseyside‑based ULEMco will assess transport applications for the hydrogen produced alongside graphene.
Tom Lissett, Bioresources and Green Energy Director at United Utilities, said the projects focus on extracting maximum value from sludge processing while delivering more efficient operations for customers. He emphasized that graphene produced from biogas has “fantastic potential” to further reduce carbon across multiple sectors and could become a key enabler in the UK’s transition to net zero.
In a parallel initiative under the same funding package, United Utilities is partnering with US tech provider General Atomics on “SCWO with the flow: Super Critical Water Oxidation (SCWO) for a cleaner future.” This project will assess whether SCWO – a technology already proven in other sectors – can be applied at UK wastewater sludge production sites to significantly reduce sludge volumes and associated disposal impacts.
Cleanfields Technologies will support trials in the US, while Queen’s University Belfast will model the SCWO system for UK sludge conditions, with Yorkshire Water and Wessex Water also involved as partners.
