The dirtiest feedstock in industry might become its cleanest business model. At a lab inside IIT Madras, a reactor roughly the size of a suitcase splits methane into two streams — hydrogen gas and a fine black powder — without sending carbon dioxide out the stack. The powder is carbon black, the reinforcing filler inside every car tyre, and the gas is fuel for refineries. One process, two sellable products, and, the company behind it claims, no CO2 emitted in the conversion.
The company is Hypersonic Technologies Private Limited, a Chennai deep-tech startup founded in 2023 by Dr Jayaraman Kandasamy (Founder & CEO) and Dr Jayakumar Venkatesan (Co-founder & CTO). Its core is staged-plasma pyrolysis: methane, natural gas or biomethane go in, hydrogen and solid carbon black come out. The approach has already earned the startup a place in YourStory’s Tech30 cohort for 2026 — and a working prototype that produces around 500 grams of hydrogen per hour.
Two plasmas, one reaction
Plasma pyrolysis uses extreme temperatures to crack hydrocarbons into hydrogen and solid carbon. Most systems run a single plasma stage; Hypersonic’s design combines dielectric plasma with microwave plasma in two stages. Kandasamy says the staged combination improves efficiency and keeps the process more stable than a single-stage system — stability matters because continuous operation is what makes or breaks a plasma reactor in industry.
The climate case rests on how hydrogen is made today. Kandasamy says conventional steam methane reforming can emit around 10 kg of CO2 for every kilogram of hydrogen produced, while carbon black manufacturing carries its own emissions. Plasma pyrolysis sidesteps both, and — because it also accepts biomethane — it can turn gas that would otherwise simply be flared into two commercial products.
The technology is at Technology Readiness Level 5, meaning validated in a relevant environment. The startup says it has received a patent grant for the technology and that it has been validated through the government-backed NRDC-NETRA programme. It has also received a Carbon Zero Challenge grant.
A second revenue stream changes the economics
Hydrogen startups usually live or die on the cost per kilogram of gas. Hypersonic’s pitch is that it doesn’t have to: carbon black is a genuine industrial commodity used in tyres, rubber, pigments and plastics, and the company is exploring higher-value grades. It says it has held discussions with established carbon black manufacturers about possible collaborations, though those talks are at an early stage.
More Read
There are two more advantages the company claims over electrolysis, the route most green-hydrogen projects take. The plasma process is water-free — the company’s site says it saves roughly 9 to 12 litres of water per kilogram of hydrogen — and it avoids 9 to 10 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of hydrogen produced. Its systems are also designed to be MRV-ready, meaning emissions avoided can be transparently tracked and monetised as carbon credits, a potential third revenue stream.
The long road from TRL 5 to a refinery
The company is now after roughly ₹5 crore to advance from TRL 5 to TRL 7, which would fund a larger pilot plant producing five kilograms of hydrogen per hour. Only then, Kandasamy says, can the startup pursue orders from refineries and steel companies — its target customers, alongside cement and fertiliser manufacturers. It is exploring commercial models including equipment sales, operating partnerships, and payments linked to output.
Kandasamy is realistic about adoption timelines. Industries cannot easily replace existing infrastructure, so he sees new facilities as the more immediate opportunity than retrofitting old plants. The founder himself brings more than a decade of plasma experience from Europe, where he worked on plasma technology for aerospace propulsion and on converting biomass into fuel and hydrogen-rich gases — expertise he returned to India specifically to apply to industrial decarbonisation.
Caveats, honestly stated
TRL 5 is genuinely early. A lab prototype producing half a kilogram of hydrogen per hour is a proof of the chemistry, not of the economics — the jump to five kilograms, and then to the tonnes-per-day scale a refinery needs, is where plasma reactors historically get expensive and finicky. The staged-plasma stability claims have yet to be proven at industrial scale.
The performance figures — the 10 kg CO2 per kg H2 for steam reforming, the water savings, and the ₹365–430 crore annual revenue potential within five years that the company projects on its site — are the company’s own numbers, not independently benchmarked in public. No customers, orders or revenue figures have been disclosed, and the discussions with carbon black manufacturers are early-stage. As with most deep-tech hardware, the next funding round is the real test: whether private or government money will pay to find out if the reactor works at pilot scale.
Still, a reactor that turns flared gas into two sellable products, built by a team that brought aerospace plasma engineering back to Chennai, is exactly the kind of hard-tech bet worth watching.
