Kotai Hydrogen Project gets grant from ARENA

In Canada, Velox Energy Materials announced its project partner, the Hydrogen Storage Research Group at Curtin University has executed a binding funding agreement with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) for grant funding of $3.2 million under the Transformative Research Accelerating Commercialization (TRAC) Program for the Kotai Hydrogen Project.

The funding will be used to optimize the production of sodium borohydride, and the high-pressure release of hydrogen and to design and construction of a pilot plant,

Velox Energy Materials has an option over 100% of the IP generated in the Kotai Hydrogen Project.

The Kotai Project involves the research development and deployment of a technology to transport hydrogen as a powder. The powder is a salt called Sodium Borohydride that stores more hydrogen by weight and volume than liquid hydrogen, ammonia or liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs).

Velox’s President and CEO, Simon Coyle, said: “Low cost and safe transport and storage of hydrogen is the largest impediment to the growth of the hydrogen sector. Velox, through subsidiary Kotai Energy and its partners, is developing a highly efficient process for the transport and storage of hydrogen.

“The Kotai process being developed utilises an inert powder to store hydrogen, which can then be released on demand wherever it is required. A key feature of the process is the ability to reverse engineer the chemical reaction, allowing the spent waste spent material to be ‘reloaded’ with hydrogen for future re-use,” the executive added.

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