Green hydro­gen, pro­duced from fos­sil-free elec­tric­i­ty is con­sid­ered, both with­in the EU and glob­al­ly, to be a key tech­nol­o­gy to man­age the green tran­si­tion. Cur­rent­ly, there are no oth­er fos­sil-free alter­na­tives for many indus­tri­al and ship­ping areas. Green hydro­gen has the poten­tial to become the lead­ing solu­tion for fos­sil-free steel pro­duc­tion and heavy ocean freight.

When pro­duc­ing green hydro­gen in large solar or wind farms, it is cru­cial to be able to quick­ly start and stop pro­duc­tion. This process requires the spe­cif­ic PEM elec­trol­y­sis tech­nol­o­gy, where the expen­sive and rare met­al irid­i­um splits water into hydro­gen and oxy­gen. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the lack of avail­able irid­i­um risks mak­ing mass pro­duc­tion of PEM elec­trolyz­ers unprof­itable. This is due to today’s overuse of irid­i­um, as well as the fact that the price of irid­i­um is fore­cast to rise sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the com­ing years.

Smoltek’s nano­ma­te­r­i­al – proven tech­nol­o­gy lead and a clear path to com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing
Smoltek Hydro­gen has devel­oped a nano­ma­te­r­i­al that has been proven to work well in long-term stud­ies, and the com­pa­ny has a clear path to reach the goal of 0.1 mg of irid­i­um per square cen­time­ter, which Smoltek as well as the lead­ing insti­tute Fraun­hofer con­sid­er to be the lev­el at which large-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing of PEM elec­trolyz­ers becomes com­mer­cial­ly prof­itable. This is prob­a­bly the only indus­tri­al­ly ver­i­fied solu­tion that is able to reach this tip­ping point.

To cap­i­tal­ize on this head start, Smoltek Hydro­gen is now seek­ing finan­cial­ly strong part­ners to finance the remain­ing devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the nano­ma­te­r­i­al, includ­ing scale-up of pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty, and cre­ate the con­di­tions need­ed to reach its tar­get of a 30% mar­ket share, cor­re­spond­ing to approx. 20 bil­lion SEK in net sales in 2030. This process has been con­cretized with Smoltek’s ongo­ing bid­ding process for Smoltek Hydro­gen, which is expect­ed to take 6–12 months.

We have high ambi­tions as we are cur­rent­ly unique in pro­vid­ing a solu­tion to a crit­i­cal prob­lem. Fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of excel­lent long-term results, we have start­ed to more firm­ly work towards becom­ing the elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers’ col­lab­o­ra­tion part­ner for the next gen­er­a­tion of elec­trolyz­ers. The inter­est from lead­ing play­ers is strong even before we have active­ly start­ed to reach out to the mar­ket, and dis­cus­sions and tests are already under­way with a num­ber of lead­ing com­pa­nies. Our tar­get is to reach a 30 per­cent mar­ket share in 2030 togeth­er with part­ners, which would cor­re­spond to a turnover of approx­i­mate­ly 20 bil­lion SEK. And even if the pro­ject­ed sales vol­ume is large, a giant fac­to­ry plant is not required. But it is urgent to start build­ing a pilot plant, because time is short. For that rea­son, the ongo­ing bid­ding process is an impor­tant step on the way there.

Elli­nor Ehrn­berg, Pres­i­dent of Smoltek Hydrogen

Plan for indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion of the nano­ma­te­r­i­al
Dur­ing the next year, Smoltek Hydro­gen plans to estab­lish a pilot plant for small-scale indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion to, togeth­er with cus­tomers, man­u­fac­ture pro­to­types of new elec­trolyz­ers and, togeth­er with machine sup­pli­ers, be able to cre­ate the spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the first large-scale plant. There are sev­er­al pos­si­ble paths for­ward regard­ing vol­ume pro­duc­tion, but in a such a fast-grow­ing indus­try it is not unusu­al to build up the busi­ness oper­a­tions as an inde­pen­dent com­pa­ny, as an alter­na­tive to being part of a larg­er indus­tri­al structure.