Rivan Industries has deployed a full-scale 1MW synthetic natural gas system at its UK facility, taking its modular fuel technology beyond the earlier 100kW pilot stage. The installation is designed to operate off-grid and combines carbon dioxide capture, hydrogen production, methanation, and power management within one integrated system.
Rivan’s process is built around three core technologies. A calcium-looping direct air capture system supplies carbon dioxide, an alkaline water electrolyser produces hydrogen, and a Sabatier reactor combines the two streams to produce methane. The company describes the resulting synthetic natural gas as a drop-in substitute for fossil natural gas, allowing it to use existing gas-handling infrastructure and combustion equipment where direct electrification is difficult.
The new system represents a significant scale increase from the company’s earlier development work. During 2025, Rivan deployed a 100kW electrolyser and reactor and later reported grid-specification reactor performance from the pilot. Its current targets for the 1MW architecture include autonomous operation, an operating life exceeding ten years, net efficiency above 30%, and total capital expenditure below £150,000, although those figures remain company design targets rather than independently demonstrated results from the newly deployed plant.
Commissioning will therefore be more informative than installation alone. A synthetic methane plant has to coordinate variable electrical input, water electrolysis, carbon dioxide capture, gas reaction, heat management, purification, controls, and safe operation as one process. Achieving the required gas specification consistently is more demanding than demonstrating each subsystem individually, particularly when the plant is expected to operate autonomously and without a conventional grid connection.
Off-grid operation is central to Rivan’s approach. Dedicated renewable generation can avoid some grid-connection costs and constraints, but it also means the fuel plant has to cope with variability in its own power supply. Electrolysers, direct air capture equipment, pumps, compressors, thermal systems, and reactor controls all have different operating characteristics, so the architecture depends on how well the complete plant responds as renewable output changes.
The synthetic-gas route also carries an efficiency penalty compared with using renewable electricity directly. Electricity is first used to produce hydrogen, additional energy is required to obtain carbon dioxide and run balance-of-plant equipment, and further losses occur during methanation. The commercial case is consequently strongest where methane itself has operational value — particularly in high-temperature processes, existing gas assets, or remote operations where direct electrification is technically awkward or disproportionately expensive.
Rivan is part of a wider group of projects seeking to turn renewable electricity into storable industrial molecules rather than treating hydrogen production as an end in itself. Andritz has started work on a 12.5MW green hydrogen plant at Gampern, where electrolysis, compression, storage, and commissioning are being handled as an integrated process system. Rivan adds another conversion step by producing methane, trading additional efficiency losses for compatibility with established gas infrastructure.
If synthetic methane meets the required gas quality, it can in principle be stored and transported through infrastructure designed for natural gas. The more difficult question is whether it can be manufactured at a cost that competes with fossil supply once renewable generation, plant utilisation, maintenance, carbon capture, and financing are considered together. Those economics become particularly sensitive when equipment operates intermittently because low utilisation spreads capital cost across fewer units of fuel.
The company has already obtained planning permission for a 15MW plant, making the 1MW system an intermediate step between pilot-scale validation and a substantially larger production asset. Operating data from commissioning should show whether the cost, efficiency, purity, autonomy, and equipment-life assumptions used in the scale-up plan hold when the complete system is run as a plant rather than as a collection of development rigs.
Manufacturing strategy will also influence that calculation. Rivan is attempting to reduce plant cost through standardised, vertically integrated hardware rather than treating each installation as a bespoke process project. Modular construction can shorten engineering and installation work if the same subsystems are repeated, but it shifts more responsibility onto the equipment designer to prove that interfaces, controls, service access, and component durability remain consistent from one unit to the next.
Synthetic fuels have accumulated no shortage of ambitious cost curves, but industrial buyers ultimately purchase dependable tonnes and megawatt-hours rather than laboratory potential. Rivan now has larger hardware on the ground, which moves the discussion towards availability, gas quality, maintenance, and repeatable production. Those figures will determine whether the 1MW system becomes a stepping stone to the planned 15MW plant or another technically interesting process whose economics fail to survive scale-up.
