Belgian start-up Solhyd, a spin-off of KU Leuven University, announced securing six million euros of seed capital from ‘a group of experienced entrepreneurs’ to optimize further the basic technology of ‘distilling’ pure hydrogen directly from the air using a particular solar-H2 panel and deploy it in pilot applications.

After assembling earlier prototypes of their Gen1 panel, Solhyd built a set of ten hydrogen panels, cast into an attractive industrial design by Comate Engineering & Design, which can generate up to 250 liters of hydrogen from the moisture in the air, just using solar energy. They call it a ‘golden hydrogen’ alternative to ‘green’ or ‘grey’ hydrogen.

Cheap sunlight and air

Jan Rongé, CEO of the company, and Tom Bosserez are two bioscience engineers who developed the hydrogen panel during their doctoral research at KU Leuven under the guidance of Professor Johan Martens. Rongé believes “hydrogen will play a crucial role in the future energy mix of a CO2-neutral society”.

“This ‘golden hydrogen’ is directly made from what is universally available, sunlight and air,” says Rongé. It could become one of the cheapest ways of making sustainable hydrogen instead of producing ‘green’ hydrogen by electrolysis, using renewable electricity sources (wind, solar).

Expensive green hydrogen

In that process, at least 30% of the energy used is lost, and with renewable electricity still being scarce, costs are high compared to the most used production method by industry today, from fossil fuels such as crude oil or natural gas via steam reforming. A process that still emits lots of CO2.

That so-called grey hydrogen costs around half the price of ‘green’ hydrogen to produce, but still can be up to €20 to €25 per kg today at the pump. An alternative is eliminating the CO2 from the grey hydrogen production process by capturing and storing (CSS) called ‘blue’ hydrogen. Still, CCS is quite expensive and technically challenging.

Even in the desert

The ‘hydrogen panel’ from Solhyd uses a unique combination of physics and chemistry with solar energy and membranes to draw pure hydrogen directly from the moisture in the air. And it doesn’t need to rain for that.

It can be relatively dry, plain air, even in the desert, where at least the sun is abundant. The amount of sun and humidity in the air is crucial for hydrogen production. In theory, it doesn’t need a grid connection for electricity so that it can be deployed anywhere in the world.

Money and additional experience

After successfully building the first batch of panels at the TRANSfarm, a site in Lovenjoel near Leuven meant for up-scaling technologies developed at the university, the challenge is to further fine-tune the technology and cost-effective production processes.

That’s where the new seed capital money comes in, with an initial tranche of two million euros being provided today. But with the fresh money, the initiators say, also comes valuable experience in entrepreneurship and technology development for future upscaling.

Investors involved are Vansan Investments (the family office of brick manufacturer Vandersanden), serial entrepreneur Luc Thijs (ex-Alro), Frank Zwerts and Keiretsu Ventures (ex-Key Technology), and Lieven Danneels (co-CEO Televic Group). The Gemma Frisius seed capital fund from the university itself is also participating.