Expanded research will include a complete electrolyzer device and a replacement for platinum to lower the cost of green hydrogen
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — March 2, 2021 — NewHydrogen, Inc., a BioSolar company (OTC:BSRC), today announced that it has executed an agreement to expand the existing sponsored research agreement with the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to develop technology to reduce the cost of green hydrogen production. The new agreement is 10 times the previous budget and significantly expands the scope of the research program.
The initial sponsored research program at UCLA focused on replacing the oxygen catalyst, iridium, a precious metal found only in asteroids, with low cost, earth-abundant materials that meet or exceed the performance characteristics of iridium. The objective is to develop inexpensive and robust materials with an outstanding ability to catalyze the electrochemical oxygen evolution reaction (OER) while achieving overall high performance water electrolysis for hydrogen production.
The initial sponsored research program at UCLA was focused on replacing the oxygen catalyst, iridium, a precious metal found only in asteroids, with low cost materials that meet or exceed the performance characteristics of iridium. The expanded research will focus on significantly reducing or replacing the hydrogen catalyst, platinum. Platinum is so rare that only 200 tons are mined every year and yet its demand is ever increasing in applications such as batteries, fuel cells, fiber optics, LCD displays, cancer treatment and many others.
Additionally, a complete and fully optimized electrolyzer device will be developed that incorporates all the innovations from this research program. This fully functional hydrogen-producing electrolyzer will serve as a reference prototype to help electrolyzer manufacturers worldwide use our breakthrough technology to produce low cost green hydrogen.
The research will continue to be under the direction of Dr. Yu Huang, Vice Chair for Graduate Studies, Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Dr. Huang and her team are creating methodologies to apply the latest developments in nanoscale materials and nanotechnology to impact a wide range of technologies including materials synthesis, catalysis, fuel cells, biomedical and devices applications.
“We are very pleased to broaden our clean energy research program at UCLA with Dr. Huang and her team, a group whose collaboration we have a high level of confidence in,” said Dr. David Lee, CEO of BioSolar. “The expanded research focus takes some of the lessons learned and developed approaches thus far, and applies them to other raw materials including platinum, which we believe will maintain its increasing price trajectory. We appreciate the great work already accomplished and share the university’s goal of a greener world.”
NewHydrogen is developing ThermoLoop™ – a breakthrough technology that uses water and heat rather than electricity to produce the world’s lowest cost green hydrogen. Hydrogen is the cleanest and most abundant element in the universe, and we can’t live without it. Hydrogen is the key ingredient in making fertilizers needed to grow food for the world. It is also used for transportation, refining oil and making steel, glass, pharmaceuticals and more. Nearly all the hydrogen today is made from hydrocarbons like coal, oil, and natural gas, which are dirty and limited resources. Water, on the other hand, is an infinite and renewable worldwide resource.
Currently, the most common method of making green hydrogen is to split water into oxygen and hydrogen with an electrolyzer using green electricity produced from solar or wind. However, green electricity is and always will be very expensive. It currently accounts for 73% of the cost of green hydrogen. By using heat directly, we can skip the expensive process of making electricity, and fundamentally lower the cost of green hydrogen. Inexpensive heat can be obtained from concentrated solar, geothermal, nuclear reactors and industrial waste heat for use in our novel low-cost thermochemical water splitting process. Working with a world class research team at UC Santa Barbara, our goal is to help usher in the green hydrogen economy that Goldman Sachs estimated to have a future market value of $12 trillion.
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