This NZ Company Is Revolutionising Hydrogen and Saving the World

Isaac Taylor

There’s always a lot of chatter about what we can do to chill out on making greenhouse gases, it’s just so fun making them though, it’s hard to quit. One solution is hydrogen, the simplest member of the family of chemical elements. Unfortunately getting hydrogen is anything but simple. If you want to extract the H out of the H20 then you have to pass electricity through water and that itself is power wasted trying to get a green energy source. To even get the process going with any sort of efficiency you need to coat a proton-exchange membrane with a catalyst, normally iridium or platinum. Those aren’t particularly common elements either. But they do speed up the process and reduce voltage requirements.

Currently, most hydrogen production is using natural gas and fossil fuels, accounting for 1.8% of all greenhouse gas emissions. That’s 10.5 times more than New Zealand contributes in total emissions a year. No amount of plastic bag banning will put a dent in this one.

Fortunately for the planet, a Kiwi deep tech company is on the case. The Lower-Hutt startup Bspkl specialises in creating the key catalyst-coated membranes which makes the hydrogen gathering more efficient. The catch is that they confirm that can do it with 25 times less catalyst than current methods.

Led by Christina Houlihan and Jérôme Leveneur, the company has recently been turning heads with its promising technology, synching a PwC New Zealand breakthrough project award at the 2023 Kiwinet research commercialisation awards as well as being shoulder-tapped as one of the top 50 clean tech companies to watch globally by the Clean Tech Group.

The tech spun out of research Jérôme was doing at GNS Science, able to create great results at a tiny scale, but nothing usable commercially. This set him off on an almost 10-year journey of trying to figure out how to scale to a point where it was usable. To finally hit this goal they have raised $2.5 million in a seed round to scale the technology.

They tout their ability to create Catalyst Coated Membrane (CCM) for PEM Electrolysis flexibly and bespoke for producers. They’ve broken the mould by utilising technology from the semiconductor industry, and with a “highly scalable approach”. Their approach is also not limited to current methods utilising Platinum, Iridium and Ruthenium catalyst materials. As technology changes, they’re able to keep up making CCM with iron, nickel, or whatever else might come their way. This puts them uniquely in a position to work alongside creators of new novel electrolysers or fuel cell tech. They also believe they can help with emerging tech like the possible use of anion exchange membranes within alkaline fuel cells.

If they can create higher efficiencies that means we can also ease our reliance on fossil fuels. Any deep tech company that can find its way into being a critical component in the rush for efficient green tech is going to be an extremely valuable company to support. It’s nice knowing that it’s happening right here in our backyard.

Booster Investment Management Limited is the issuer of the Booster Innovation Scheme, Booster Innovation Fund (Fund) an investor in B.Spkl Limited. The Fund’s Product Disclosure Statements are available at www.booster.co.nz or by contacting your financial adviser.