Professor Yulong Ding
Founding Chamberlain Chair of Chemical Engineering
Professor Yulong Ding is a Founding Chamberlain Chair of Chemical Engineering who invented the liquid air energy storage technology.
PeroCycle moves from lab promise to industrial prospect
Launched last year, the spin-out has moved at a pace and now has a clear roadmap for its first commercial scale facility.
The steel industry has a large carbon footprint, accounting for some 8% of global emissions, but most technologies designed to help lower this require expensive infrastructure overhauls.
PeroCycle, an industrial decarbonisation startup spun out from the University of Birmingham in early 2025, is offering a more cost-effective option that can be retrofitted onto existing facilities and provide payback in as little as two or three years. This means PeroCycle is a rare sustainability proposition: viable even without subsidies.
Professor Yulong Ding
Dr Harriet Kildahl
The company, built on breakthrough research by University of Birmingham academics Professor Yulong Ding and Dr Harriet Kildahl, spun out with support from University of Birmingham Enterprise, Cambridge Future Tech, a deep tech venture builder, and global mining company Anglo American. Over the past year it has been putting in place all the pieces it needs to go from academic research to commercial deployment. “We have expanded the team, and put key agreements in place that strengthen our ability to commercialise the technology,” says Grant Budge, who came on board as CEO last August.
PeroCycle uses a perovskite catalyst and a proprietary process to convert carbon dioxide, released in the steelmaking process, into carbon monoxide which can be reused to extract pure iron from iron ore. It is this closed-loop system — turning carbon into a valuable feedstock — that gives the system a key advantage over other green steel approaches such as carbon capture and the use of hydrogen to reduce coal.
PeroCycle has secured support from Innovate UK through a Growth Catalyst grant, alongside private investment, to build and test a pilot module over the next 18 months. This programme is designed to advance the technology to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6, a critical milestone where the focus shifts from whether the process works to how it can be engineered and financed at scale.
A recent feasibility assessment by Jindal Steel in the Gulf state of Oman (pictured) has helped validate the technology’s performance in a real-world steelmaking context.
PeroCycle is also in discussions with several other industrial players and has multiple potential hosts for a first pilot plant.
By the end of summer 2026 PeroCycle had announced strategic partnerships with gas separation and purification company Beijing Peking University Pioneer Technology Corporation Ltd (PKU Pioneer), and international engineering consultancy io consulting.
The agreements will enable rapid progress. “Our technology is designed to be a 'plug-and-play' solution for the world’s most carbon-intensive industries. We now have the expertise and technical support we need, and a clear, staged, roadmap for design, construction, and commissioning of a first commercial-scale facility,” says Budge.
Internally, the company has been reshaping itself for this next phase, recruiting a Head of Process and Engineering, and Marketing and Communications Manager.
As PeroCycle moves towards commercial deployment, University of Birmingham Enterprise has continued to play an important supporting role, retaining a seat on PeroCycle’s board and providing governance and commercial input as the company transitions to larger industrial projects.