HyperSolar, Inc. (OTCQB:HYSR), the developer of a breakthrough technology to produce renewable hydrogen using sunlight and any source of water, today announced that it had successfully produced renewable hydrogen using commercially available low-cost silicon solar cells (supplied by Midwest Optoelectronics, LLC “MWOE”) protected with HyperSolar’s proprietary coating.
The Company’s research team used a patent pending solar-cell/membrane assembly that produces hydrogen and oxygen separately on two different sides of the solar cells. The membrane prevents mixing of hydrogen and oxygen (hazardous gaseous mixture) resulting in the extraction of “pure hydrogen,” necessary for use in fuel cells that can power cars like the Toyota Mirai and Honda Clarity, as well as industrial power equipment. This integrated assembly also prevents recombination of hydrogen and oxygen into water at the catalyst surface, greatly improving the overall hydrogen utilization efficiency.
Photos accompanying this announcement are available at
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In addition, the key to this success is the use of HyperSolar’s patent pending electroactive coating formulated to protect the solar cells from corrosion during prolonged hydrogen production. The success of utilizing silicon solar cells provided by outside manufacturers represents yet another indication of the potential of HyperSolar’s technology for economically viable production of hydrogen.
“While the science itself is challenging, we have always looked for simple, economic, and scalable methods for hydrogen production,” said Dr. Joun Lee, Chief Technology Officer of HyperSolar. “When fully developed, we believe our technology will be easier to deploy, and will have source-to-use energy cost competitive to the current commercial method which uses natural gas to produce hydrogen.”
HyperSolar is now building a 1 square foot hydrogen generator prototype using the commercial silicon cells. Long-term stability testing of the commercial triple junction silicon solar cells for hydrogen production is currently in progress.
“Our goal is to lower the cost of producing renewable hydrogen to compete with natural gas reformed hydrogen,” said Tim Young, CEO of HyperSolar. “We are very encouraged by the production levels achieved using MWOE-supplied low cost triple-junction cells. The cost of these cells, plus the catalysts necessary for hydrogen production, while not yet on par with the hydrogen produced from steam reforming of natural gas, show great promise for another method of producing hydrogen without using fossil fuels. While our ultimate goal is to complete development of our nanoparticle technology using earth-abundant materials, we are going to explore market opportunities with these readily available solar cells, that when incorporated into our proprietary prototype device, produce pure hydrogen.”
HyperSolar’s research is focused on developing a completely renewable, low-cost and submersible hydrogen production particle that can split water molecules using the power of the sun, emulating the core functions of photosynthesis. Each particle is a complete hydrogen generator that contains a novel high voltage solar cell bonded to chemical catalysts by a proprietary encapsulation coating. A video detailing the rise of hydrogen fuel technology as well as HyperSolar’s completely renewable process of hydrogen fuel production can be viewed by visiting here.
