Nanoptek garners $4.7M to develop solar hydrogen generator
Nanoptek Corporation, a renewable energy company that produces hydrogen directly from water using sunlight and its proprietary photocatalyst, today announced it has closed a $4.7M Series A equity financing round, led by The Quercus Trust, a
Most hydrogen today is produced by steam methane reformation (SMR) of natural gas feedstock. In addition to consuming natural gas, the SMR process releases carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Some hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water, but this too results in carbon dioxide production unless the electricity used is from wind or solar.
Nanoptek’s Solar Hydrogen Generator (SHG) produces hydrogen directly from water using only sunlight and its proprietary photocatalyst in a process known as photoelectrochemical (PEC) water dissociation, or photolysis. No carbon dioxide is produced. Nanoptek has improved the PEC process by developing a titania photocatalyst that absorbs significantly more sunlight than normal titania. Nanoptek’s patent pending technology achieves this with nano-structures that stress the titania. Developed over 5 years with funding from NASA, DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, and a SEED loan from MTC through the Renewable Energy Trust totaling over $1.3M, this “bandgap engineering” results in more efficient and lower-cost production of hydrogen from sunlight.
Nanoptek expects to sell the carbon-free locally produced hydrogen to customers with high value industrial applications, and plans to also make it available for applications including transportation, backup power, “green” electricity for municipalities, and off-grid off-pipe power generation.
source: nanoptek.com