The company announced that development of its Gen 1 hydrogen generation system has progressed to the point at which it can move to manufacturing engineering before full commercial production of the hydrogen panels. This will lead the way to the Company’s first pilot-scale solar-hydrogen farm.
Key milestones required to reach this point have included fine tuning of chemical structure and application of protective coatings to extend the life of the hydrogen-generating cells. Additionally, the attachment of the catalyst and the mechanical alteration of the cells essential for more significant hydrogen generation and capture have been refined to the point that it can now be optimised for manufacturing.
“Our research team at the University of Iowa has now prepared us to enter the manufacturing stage of Gen 1 development” said Tim Young, CEO of HyperSolar. “We are now working with manufacturers’ engineering process which is meant to produce the highest quality hydrogen panel for the lowest possible cost. Because things could move very quickly now, we are currently considering a number of potential partners and sites for the first pilot plant.”
In November of 2018, HyperSolar announced its intention to build a demonstration pilot plant, and that has been the focus of intensive effort in the laboratory as well as working with contract manufacturers and engineering firms for assembly and plant construction. While its patented nanoparticle (Gen 2) technology is still in development, the Company’s management believes it can utilise its proprietary stability coatings and catalysts with readily available commercial solar cells encapsulated in panels with water (‘hydrogen generation panels’) to demonstrate a completely renewable hydrogen generation system at production pilot plant scale. The pilot plant itself will be a full plug and play facility which will be initially designed with the Gen 1 technology, as the Company’s more advanced and efficient units come available, previous technology can easily be replaced without changing the plant infrastructure.
The Company has progressively worked on modifying the configuration of the solar hydrogen generation panels for better product quality, lower cost and efficient manufacturing. HyperSolar’s team has closely worked with the manufacturers for improving the design and testing the modified product. The Company believes that the current design is ready for manufacturing.
“Getting to this stage of development has been the most time and labor-intensive part of the technology development process” Mr Young added. “We believe that this next stage will progress faster from this point through manufacturing and on to the pilot plant.”
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