Monolith Materials officially broke ground Thursday on its manufacturing plant next door to the Sheldon Station power plant near Hallam.
The San Francisco-area clean energy start-up company is partnering with the Nebraska Public Power District on the plant, which will produce carbon black, a fine, flour-like powder used in tires, plastic, inks and cellphones. Monolith says it has developed a first-of-its kind technology to manufacture carbon black from natural gas instead of oil.
Monolith plans to use electricity to extract the carbon from natural gas. Byproducts of the process are hydrogen and water, and Monolith will sell the hydrogen to NPPD to use as fuel in one of its burners, which it is converting to burn hydrogen instead of coal.
Monolith has said the manufacturing plant could eventually create up to 600 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new capital investment.
Initially, the company plans to hire 50 people and expects to complete construction on the first phase of the operation in about 18 months.
