The Stirling Business Podcast

How A Scottish Inventor Cuts Heating Bills By Up To 50%

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Your heating system might be wasting money on something you cannot even see: dissolved gases in the water. We sit down with Stirling inventor Jim Bissett, founder of Biscuit Controls, to explain Hydrogenie, a retrofit device designed to remove dissolved oxygen, capture sludge, and improve how central heating systems behave in the real world. Jim breaks down the core physics in plain language, from vortex flow and negative pressure to why getting air out of the system can reduce corrosion, stabilise circulation, and support better boiler efficiency. 

We also dig into the numbers and the practicalities. Jim shares reported results from testing and field installs, including domestic savings claims up to 50% depending on building heat loss, plus commercial examples that show how energy efficiency retrofits can stack. We talk about the broader “Genie” portfolio too: Kerrogenie for heating oil performance, VoltoGenie for voltage optimisation, and CircleGenie for controlling secondary hot water loop pumps that often run 24/7. A standout case study comes from our own hotel setting, where combining voltage optimisation and hot water control helped reduce annual electricity costs from roughly £44,000 to around £30,000 to £32,000. 

The conversation goes beyond today’s products into what comes next, including Jim’s early work on capturing dissolved methane from slurry and digestate streams to turn waste gas into usable energy. If you care about reducing energy bills, improving boiler performance, lowering carbon emissions, and finding practical building services solutions that do not require ripping everything out, you will want to hear this one. Subscribe, share it with a facilities manager or property developer, and leave us a review with your biggest question about cutting energy waste.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome back to the Sterling Business Podcast. I'm Neil Munda, your host, and we're here in Studio King Street for a conversation today with Jim Bizzard. Jim is the founder and director of Biscuit Controls and the inventor of Hydrogenie. Hi, Jim. How are you? Hello, Neil. Thanks for having me. I'm fine, thank you. Brilliant. Okay, so um you're not the it's not your first time on video. I've seen your uh YouTube video. Uh fantastic for those that haven't seen it. We'll uh we'll maybe put it in the show notes and and and kind of uh distribute that around after the after the podcast. But um Jim, you're a local guy. Um another fantastic uh story about uh business in Sterling. So why don't we start by you just kind of introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about you?

From Electrician To Business Owner

SPEAKER_00

Well hi, thanks. I thanks Neil. Uh I'm Jim Bissett. Um I'm the uh founder and uh patent uh sorry the the inventor of hydrogeny. Uh my roots started as an electrician. Um I'm from a state I uh grew up in Bridge of Allen uh in the Castle Ecroft, uh then went to uh Thornhill when we moved to Thornhill and went to Calendar High School, where uh at that point I when I was leaving school I got an apprenticeship with uh Van Hagen and Calendar, served my apprenticeship as an electrician there. Um then Margaret Thatcher put us on a three-day week, so I got a job with the Stirling Council. Um after that I went and drove lorries with my dad uh for three years, then went off uh went to start uh went offshore. Sorry, went to F FS, then went offshore uh and I ended up on the floating dock uh for the Trident Submarine doing bits and pieces there as well. Um I started my I ended up starting my own business and the monster grew and ended up with uh well basically 14 people uh electricians and apprentices between them went through my company. Um I invented a skywalker, which is a uh a piece of kit that I'll not talk about today, but um then kind of always my brain never stops and uh invented hydrogeny and uh in 2014 we had it tested by Strathclyde University where uh we got we put it into a three-bedroom house in Kirkintilloch and we got 49.8% saving on uh on that house. Uh we then put it into a secondary school in uh Paisley where we uh we saw 39% saving uh on the school, which is a lot of secondary school. So um yeah, so basically since then I've been selling it and installing it up and down the country. We've now got over 1,400 uh installs up and down the country uh for domestic, and we've got about 120 uh commercial.

SPEAKER_01

So Jim, um so life life before uh biscuit controls and hide Hydrogenie uh looked like you had a pretty busy life. So if I kind of summarise electrician, you worked offshore, you were on the kind of you know offshore platforms for a while. So then you kind of stopped doing that and you started out on your own. So roughly when was that and uh how did you get started?

What Hydrogenie Is And How It Works

SPEAKER_00

Uh probably about 1980 uh 1989, I uh became um self-employed offshore, and I was working for Cannes uh doing Abseiling, and so I was doing sparky on the end of a rope. Uh and um then things kind of dried up about probably the the start of the 90s, and I kind of had to move back because when I was offshore, the two weeks I was off, I was doing bits and pieces. It was going through the the books, of course, but uh doing bits and pieces in the and uh building up a lot of jobs. So I was able to step off and then start my own business, and of course as an electrician, as an electrician, yeah, and uh and doing electrical uh business. So uh my company at that point was called James S. Bus Electricians Limited, and uh yeah we we did uh a lot of stuff until the the financial crisis and that kind of scuppered things a lot. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So w when did you start inventing things then?

SPEAKER_00

Um probably about uh the late 90s. I came up with a I was look my mate and I were looking to change my Vellux's out and uh on my roof, and uh I thought well we need because my roof's that steep, we had to get something so we could stand in front of the vellus to change them out. So I came up with the idea of uh Skywalker, which is uh uh a piece of kit that you can put onto ladders, so roof ladders, ladders on the side, and then we started putting uh PV on the roofs way back then, and we've we used that as uh as our um go-to scaffold. So the the company that we were subcontracting to didn't have to put scaffolding up, we just went in and did the job and came out and that was it. So then uh yeah, there's hydrogenic uh started to fester on my head because we were doing as the electrical company were we were putting in electronics from other companies that were uh that I got to know and they were looking for people to install them. So we started installing them, and basically my head got rounded the fact that dissolved oxygen was in the water, and if we got rid of that, we can actually save money. Um so yeah, that was what it all started.

SPEAKER_01

So let's get uh specifically into Hydrogenie then. So Hydrogenie uh it is a brand, but it's also a product of part of a bigger portfolio of products. So why don't you tell us a little bit a bit about Hydrogenie, what it is, and then we'll talk about what it does, and then we'll we'll come on to the business benefits of it.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so Hydrogenie is a piece of hardware which fits onto the uh retrofits to the flow and return pipes of a central heating system. And what it does is it takes the dissolved oxygen in sorry, takes the the water through fluid dynamics inside the chambers of the hydrogen E. And it spins the water and starts a cent uh starts a uh a centrifugal uh spin inside which throws the dirt to the outside, and then we've got uh an exit that comes off the side of that which throws the the water gets the sorry, the dirt gets flung into, and we've got a magnet in there that catches the magnetic dirt in there. And that's the same for domestic and commercial uh hydrogenies. The uh once the dissolved once the uh water is going through the system, uh the the unit, uh it it forms uh a vortex, and at the bottom of the vortex, and I'm not giving you the fingers now, at the bottom of the vortex you've got negative pressure here, and it's just like you walk looking down the plug hole uh when you're letting the water out of the bath. At the bottom of that, you get negative pressure, and the dissolved oxygen, the dissolved gases come into the centre, and they are small bubbles which elongate and then come up, and they come up into the centre and go up uh and out through the automatic uh air valve at the top. That doesn't get back in again. So once the dissolved oxygen is out of the water, the next part of physics happens is that uh it compresses that water slightly because of the way the water's going through the chambers. And if you compress a fluid with no gas in it, it'll lift in temperature by itself. Right. So we got a two to three degree lift in temperature on the flow and a two-degree lift in temperature on the return. So that's great, but the boiler can't see that, so it can't regulate because it can't see that uplifting temperature. So we've got uh an interphase unit which is automatic, it it has a sensor that goes on the flow pipe coming out of one hydrogeny and then one on the return coming out of the return. And it looks at the delta T between the two, and when it sees the delta T is made, it then puts the boiler in economizing mode. But the other thing is that it also keeps the boiler from the uh having high return temperatures.

SPEAKER_01

And how quickly is this happening?

SPEAKER_00

It's the regulation of the box. Well, basically if on a house, if uh say it's a three-bedroom house, if we get it fitted and have it on within an hour we're seeing the the lifting temperature. It's sometimes before that.

What The Savings Look Like

SPEAKER_01

So that all sounds really technical. Um little retrofitable box kind of fits to the side of your boiler with uh an inflow and a kind of outflow pipe connected to it. So that's great, but what for the consumer um of the electricity or the per the person paying the bills, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00

Well, yeah, for gas, oil, uh LPG, um on a domestic house, we've had it with as you as I said earlier, we had the the testing done. So we're saying up to 50%. Now, I mean depending on your heat loss of that's up to 50% savings on your bills. On the bills, yes.

SPEAKER_01

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um course that depends on the heat loss of the building. Like an older uh building might see a lesser amount, but you know, um there's uh and then the commercial commercially we're saving about 35% or up to 35%. So again, it depends on uh the heat loss of that building as well. Uh so yeah, so it's it's all good, mate.

The Wider Genie Product Portfolio

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so the Hydrogen E is a brand of your portfolio, but it's also a product within the portfolio. You have a whole and you have the patent on that particular technology, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So the Hydrogene is what you have your um trademark on.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um what else do you have surrounding the Hydrogene as a portfolio then? At a high level, what what types of products do you plug into the store?

SPEAKER_00

There are other uh derivatives from the patent that we've uh we've um done. So the uh on the kerosene, which is basically you put it on the kerosene, it takes the dissolved gases out the uh out of the kerosene, it also spins out the uh can condensate water that could be coming through from the the tank. Uh uh the can the conden uh condensate water drops to the bottom of the tank, so sometimes when you fill the tank up, it stirs that up and it comes through, so it's not good to go through your through your uh your burner. Um then we we uh uh basically heat preheat the the oil with a flow and return uh connection, which then heats the oil up and gives a better burn. Um especially in the really cold days, it means that the the the uh oil isn't as gloopy or you know starts to get kind of uh heavier.

SPEAKER_01

So what so what is that doing again for the consumer? Is that giving you an increment on savings over and above what the hydrogenie would give you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're getting that up to up to ten percent additional uh savings on that.

SPEAKER_01

So if I get this right, if you're getting 25 to 30 percent in a commercial setting out of your hydrogenie saving on your electricity bill, you may be getting another five to ten percent by layering in high uh Kerrogenie. Yeah. Um so you could be in the mid thirties in terms of savings off your built at that point. Yeah, there's that's a possibility of that, yeah. So what what else within the portfolio? So I'm I'm I'm getting the kind of view that you're layering these savings up by the more products within the portfolio that you put into the QT environment, right?

SPEAKER_00

They've all been designed and brought in as as uh systems to build a system that uh can provide the customer with what they're looking for. So uh especially in the commit uh well, domestic and commercial, with the uh you keep saying uh electrical uh electricity prices or electricity, but uh the Volto Genie is basically a voltage optimizer. Now, in most cases, and let's just touch on where we are. Uh at the apart hotels here, we put voltage optimization in for yourselves and circle genie, which we'll touch touch on later. But uh we put voltage optimization in here. Your voltage coming in here was 240 to 240, sorry, 245 uh to 246 and in three phase. So we were able to take 20 volts out of that and take it down as close as we could to twenty two twenty. Um now that provided you with uh with the the um the savings that we'll probably talk to talk about. But uh the the reason why people are are conserved with the electricity coming into their house is that the voltage that uh most well all uh appliances run on is between 230 uh 220 to 230 volts. So if you've got 250 volts coming in, the two the the voltage coming in if it's high means that the wattage that you're see that the the meter's seeing is high as well. So therefore, if we can reduce the voltage to as close to 220 volts as possible, then we reduce the wattage. Now, of course, in some cases you've got to watch for uh voltage uh drop and everything on on cable. So you you you look at that and and uh determine what you what we can bring it down to. But uh in most cases, well let's say say the domestic situation, we can put a voltage optimizer in and the the uh it guarantee it's a guaranteed 10% saving on that home on their electricity. Now that's a lot of a lot in some cases. Um so like yourself here at the apart hotel, you've got mainly it's all electric here. Uh your rooms are heated with uh uh electricity, your hot water's uh heated with electricity, and we put on our circle genie along with that, which looks at the uh looks to control the um the secondary hot water loop pump. So if you've got a a secondary hot water loop pump on your on your your hot water tank, it basically sooks the water from the hot water tank round past all your outlets and back to the the tank. Now, most of these run at 24 hours a day, as yours was left at 24 hours a day.

SPEAKER_01

And to put it into context, we have two 800-litre water tanks servicing all of the hotel rooms in the building.

SPEAKER_00

That's correct.

SPEAKER_01

Which is a lot of water to keep heated, yeah, run the clock, right? Yeah. And in a hotel, you need to typically do that, right?

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So any savings on the electricity, heating that water is a benefit. And and yeah, so so our example is a great one, actually, because this is how we kind of came across each other when uh when we found this technology. So by putting voltage genie and circle genie into our environment here, uh on average our electricity bills were about£44,000 a year, give or take. And we managed to get a 33% saving out of that, so they're now down to in the region of 30, 32,000 pounds a year. So that's what can be done with two of the products out of the portfolio.

SPEAKER_00

Two of the products, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So therefore, if you've got uh um a commercial property with or hotel, whatever, uh with uh that type of uh hot water demand, um, and you're you're heating it with uh a gas or uh oil or or whatever, um putting hydrogenie on as your starting point. Then you add on a circogenie, and then you look at the voltage and you put on a voltage genie, and then there's other things like stratogenie we can put on that basically uh takes the dissolved oxygen out of the water and a hot water tank, you've got a s and some of them you've got a de-stratification um pump on the outside, which basically the layers that so if you don't have something that's pumping that water and s and and making it move inside the tank, uh huh, you get layers of heat buildup. So you don't get complete heat uh through the through the tank and it's not mixing it, not mixing as well. So uh on some of the larger tanks you get a de-stratification loop. So we've got it's basically um a small hydrogeny uh put onto that uh de stratification loop. Now, also the fact is that we can get the dissolved oxygen down uh to the level uh that Legion L can't grow. So we put that on just to help stop Legion L in that tank as well. And then we've got Legio genie which we can put onto the maze water, which takes the dissolved oxygen out of the water coming into the building, and we have dissolved oxygen uh sensors on the flow coming in and the flow going away from it, so we can actually see what the see what is taken out, and that's that's uh that can be um monitored uh remotely and put alarms on it so that if anything comes anything uh is untoward there it can alarm.

Real World Case Studies In Schools

SPEAKER_01

Great. So you can give us a couple more kind of case study examples. So we talked about the hotel accommodation here and the savings that a typical hotel that is powered purely by electricity. So give us a couple of other industry examples of things that you've done uh and some of the savings that they've received.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, um, so uh we put it on to a school in uh Cumbernauld for North Warren's year council. Um the uh the school was called Glen Crying School. Um it was just about the end of COVID. So at that point for that uh that um school uh year they had to leave the the windows open, if you remember, for uh the schools. So we're heating the pool and it's a large school because it they they take nursery to um like twenty-one year olds, um and it's uh it's a um what do you call it, uh special needs school. Okay. So before we were there, they were they were uh heating the pool from a Monday, starting up on a Monday, and it would take to Thursday before the pool pool would get to temperature, and the pool had to get to to 32 degrees. Um and after we put the the hydrogeny on, uh the the first day I'm sitting doing the paperwork uh for the the handover, and the uh janitor came in and she says to me, Jim, that that this is the Monday uh that the temperature's up in the pool already, and that's one o'clock. And that's been like that ever since. And even with the windows open and heating that pool, we still got twenty-four percent saving. That's incredible. So uh you know Oh it's just with hydrogen. Just with hydrogeny, yeah. And the controllers. Yeah. Fantastic. There were six inch ones, of course.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Yeah. So a lot of water flow going through them. They were about eight foot tall.

SPEAKER_00

Mm-hmm.

What’s Next: Harvesting Methane

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, some of these look like uh, you know, full kind of mechanical rooms on ships when they're installed, but you know, I guess horses for courses, right? Depending on the kind of nature of the business. So um fantastic. So so what's next then? So what what's next in the pipeline of product, if you like, for um hydrogenie?

SPEAKER_00

Well, if uh the next things in my head are a biogenie which which actually harvests the methane from slurries. Um it uh I've done proof of concept and it works. Um the UN um uh Antonio Gortes. Uh I got in touch with him back way back uh when the the when the COP twenty six was in Scot in Scotland and kept up with his secretary, Ambassador Boom, and uh he has expressed uh interest in um funding uh project uh from the UN uh to remove the the dissolved methane from we can So you're gone from dissolved ox oxygen to dissolved methane now. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So it means that we can actually use that methane to uh generate electricity or heat, uh whatever. So we can um what what we we uh tried it on to start with was uh digest it from uh an anaerobic digester. And uh because the anaerobic digesters take food stock in uh into the anaerobic digester and they've got to keep it in for a certain amount of time until it gets to peak uh gas generation, and then of course they need to put more food in to keep that that uh height of gas uh manufacture up, and they kick the digestate out, which is called it's basically the waste, digestic out. And of course that digestate that's coming out there's highly in uh you know it's highly in trend with uh dissolved uh methane. So um we did that there. We got it wasn't it wasn't a big pump that was pumping us through, but we got five cubic meters of gas every 24 hours. Um and yeah, um we're looking for ways we can we can utilise that uh maybe um still in council are are looking at uh potentially at plain not plane, sorry, uh at the at fill-in. Um maybe try to try to take the heat from the water in the in the mine, but that water might have uh methane in it. So we might be able to strike that and use that to make the electricity to drive the other thing. So the knocking affect hydropower and mine's got already.

Lessons Learned And Personal Life

SPEAKER_01

So that's uh so so still in Thornhill. Thornhill, yeah. So hydrogeny, born and bred, manufactured. Manufactured in Thornhill in uh basic uh PLC uh up there. So um which is a great story for Sterling, right? Thing technologies like this being invented on the doorstep and you know, obviously reaching a a pretty wide market. Uh and hopefully we can help you with that because we believe in it so much that uh we become a sales sales agent for you. Hopefully we'll be able to take that to market and take it into property developers and and and and a whole raft of other other industry sectors for you. So now that you're a bit older, wiser, experienced. Now, in more in the kind of you know, invention of technology world, uh very much kind of aligned to where you started out as an electrician and kind of hanging off the ropes on uh you know on on platforms out in the sea, etc. I need some sort of some ties of ropes to hook me now. So um would you have done anything differently if you were starting again?

SPEAKER_00

Um no, probably not. I've had a pretty good life with it. Um certainly why I looked at uh sort of having to come up with stuff and having to, you know, really th sort of uh hydrogeny wise was basically I thought, right, I don't want to go into lofts and under floors and everybody and putting cables in and everything now. You know, I'm 64 now. Um and I thought right, okay, uh need to come up with something. Some invent reinvent myself. Uh but I've been doing all the installs myself. Um I've got a good mate, Davy Kinaird, that uh comes and gives me a dugout and uh Jim Black and you know it's friend th that's when you know when you've got friends. Uh you know, you've got um Neil Neil McLaren as well, and they're all they're all uh guys that I've known for years. Um and they're all local boys as well. Boy boys and they all they'll they all come and give me a dig out and everything, it's great. Uh and you know I wouldn't be as far away if I if I didn't have these people, but the um to get back to your your sort of question, yeah, I would I would I wouldn't change it. Um the other thing I would like to say is that uh my wife has been behind me all the way and my family. Um and I think that's the main thing in in any business is that as long as you've got you've got uh s support uh and you know you need a lot of support to to do this.

SPEAKER_01

Have you got her on the installs yet?

SPEAKER_00

Not yet, no, no. And I don't think it will manufacturing line? No, she does the she does the the and all the rest of it, so I can't ask her anymore. She's uh so if she looks after the grandkids for my daughter at the moment, so that's great. And and that and having grandkids is brilliant as well. So looking to sort of hopefully leave a legacy at some in some way or another. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Not really. If you lead at 64, what do you like doing?

SPEAKER_00

Motorbikes, uh and uh fishing. I like fly fishing if I get the time. Um and and and and just the grandkids now uh take a lot of my time uh whenever I can give it, you know? Yeah, it's great. Well sorry. Their joke at Christmas time was uh why does grandad cross the road? Uh and I said, I don't know. We're setting the sitting at the dinner table at Christmas. I don't know. To get to beans because I do like a beans.

SPEAKER_01

Brilliant. All right, well, very inspiring story, Jim. Thank you uh for coming to share it with the audience and um yeah, come back soon. Uh you know, when you're at the point where you've retired, we could maybe do this uh podcast in Arizona or something whilst you've been uh flitting around on your Harley for a few days. But um, you know, thanks for coming along and uh yeah, good luck with everything. Thank you very much, Neil. Thanks, Jim. So that was another episode of the Sterling Business Podcast uh in the can. Uh thanks to Jim Bissett today uh to come along and talk to us about Hydrogenie. So until next time, uh stay safe.