Smoltek Hydrogen’s plans revealed

In epis­ode 639 of the pod­cast Entre­pren­örsdriv (”Entre­pren­eur’s Drive”), Tomas Tränkner inter­viewed Ellinor Ehrn­berg, Pres­id­ent  of Smol­tek Hydro­gen AB. This insight­ful inter­view covered the innov­at­ive solu­tions Smol­tek Hydro­gen is devel­op­ing, Ehrn­ber­g’s back­ground and qual­i­fic­a­tions, the com­pany’s growth plans, industry feed­back, and busi­ness strategy for the next five years. This art­icle sum­mar­izes the key points of the inter­view, high­light­ing Smol­tek Hydro­gen­’s unique approach to solv­ing crit­ic­al chal­lenges in the green hydro­gen sec­tor and show­cas­ing Ehrn­ber­g’s expert­ise in lead­ing the com­pany to sig­ni­fic­ant growth.

Solving a critical challenge in green hydrogen production

Smol­tek Hydro­gen AB addresses one of the most press­ing issues in green hydro­gen pro­duc­tion: the depend­ence on iridi­um, one of the world’s rarest and most expens­ive metals. Iridi­um is essen­tial for PEM (Pro­ton Exchange Mem­brane) elec­tro­lyz­ers, which pro­duce hydro­gen by elec­tro­lys­is of water. How­ever, iridi­um’s scarcity and high cost are sig­ni­fic­ant bar­ri­ers to scal­ing up green hydro­gen pro­duc­tion. The price of iridi­um in 2024 is around EUR 200,000 per kilo­gram. It is expec­ted to rise sharply due to lim­ited annu­al pro­duc­tion of only 9 tons, sourced mainly from South Africa and Russia.

Smol­tek Hydro­gen has developed a tech­no­logy that dra­mat­ic­ally reduces the iridi­um required in PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers by up to 95%. This makes green hydro­gen pro­duc­tion more eco­nom­ic­al and scal­able, con­trib­ut­ing sig­ni­fic­antly to the glob­al trans­ition to sus­tain­able energy.

Ellinor Ehrnberg’s way to Smoltek Hydrogen

Ellinor Ehrn­berg brings a wealth of exper­i­ence and expert­ise to her role as Pres­id­ent of Smol­tek Hydro­gen AB.

She has a Ph.D. in Indus­tri­al Man­age­ment focus­ing on tech­no­lo­gic­al change and dis­rupt­ive innovation.

Her career includes stra­tegic roles in long-term plan­ning and busi­ness devel­op­ment, innov­a­tion man­age­ment and mer­gers and acquis­i­tions (M&A) at SKF, Mölnly­cke and Husqvarna. Before join­ing Smol­tek, she worked on tech­no­logy trends and stra­tegic plan­ning at RISE (Research Insti­tutes of Sweden), work­ing with CTOs from major Swedish companies.

Scaling up Smoltek Hydrogen AB

Smol­tek Hydro­gen AB is stra­tegic­ally posi­tioned to cap­it­al­ize on the rap­idly grow­ing demand for elec­tro­lyz­ers driv­en by the glob­al push for green hydro­gen. As the need for PEM (Pro­ton Exchange Mem­brane) elec­tro­lyz­ers skyrock­ets, the lim­ited avail­ab­il­ity of iridi­um is becom­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant bot­tle­neck. Man­u­fac­tur­ers urgently seek solu­tions to reduce iridi­um con­sump­tion, mak­ing Smol­tek Hydro­gen­’s innov­a­tion critical.

The industry moves through sev­er­al stages, from concept to pro­to­type devel­op­ment, fol­lowed by pilot pro­duc­tion and full-scale indus­tri­al­iz­a­tion. Smol­tek Hydro­gen has care­fully aligned its scal­ing strategy with these industry stages. By syn­chron­iz­ing its devel­op­ment timelines with major elec­tro­lyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers, Smol­tek Hydro­gen ensures it is ready with a scal­able, iridi­um-effi­cient solu­tion when the mar­ket needs it. This pro­act­ive approach pos­i­tions Smol­tek Hydro­gen as a lead­er in green hydro­gen tech­no­logy. It ensures they can effect­ively meet the grow­ing demand, provid­ing a crit­ic­al solu­tion to an industry-wide challenge.

Industry Feedback and validation

Demand for PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers is expec­ted to grow rap­idly, mak­ing the effi­cient use of iridi­um crit­ic­al. Two approaches are avail­able: the exist­ing tech­nique of depos­it­ing iridi­um dir­ectly onto the pro­ton exchange mem­brane and Smol­tek’s meth­od of depos­it­ing iridi­um on met­al in con­tact with the membrane.

The exist­ing tech­nique wastes much iridi­um, and attempts to reduce this waste have proven inad­equate. Inde­pend­ent stud­ies have shown that elim­in­at­ing this waste is phys­ic­ally impossible by pla­cing iridi­um ink dir­ectly on the pro­ton exchange membrane.

Smol­tek Hydro­gen­’s solu­tion is to cre­ate a forest of nano­scale met­al rods to which the iridi­um is attached atom by atom. This allows every iridi­um atom to come into con­tact with the mem­brane and be use­ful. In this way, Smol­tek can reduce iridi­um usage by 95% with the same effic­acy as today.

Until recently, Smol­tek Hydro­gen did not make a big deal about its tech­no­logy. There was no point until they demon­strated in a 1,000-hour dur­ab­il­ity test that the solu­tion met real-world require­ments. How­ever, with the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the 1,000-hour test, they have now begun to show­case their solu­tion. This break­through has attrac­ted con­sid­er­able atten­tion at the 245th Elec­tro­chem­ic­al Soci­ety Meet­ing, high­light­ing Smol­tek Hydro­gen­’s poten­tial to revo­lu­tion­ize the green hydro­gen industry by address­ing a crit­ic­al resource challenge.

Smoltek Hydrogen’s Five-year business plan

Smol­tek Hydro­gen­’s five-year busi­ness plan focuses on find­ing a stra­tegic part­ner, indus­tri­al or fin­an­cial, to co-cre­ate a com­mer­cial product based on its tech­no­logy. Dis­cus­sions are under­way with sev­er­al poten­tial part­ners. The plan is to devel­op pro­duc­tion capa­city in sync with the part­ner­’s devel­op­ment pro­ject: First, a pilot plant for small-scale indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion, fol­lowed by a full-scale, high-volume pro­duc­tion unit. They already have a sup­pli­er ready to build a turn­key pro­duc­tion facility.

Giv­en the new paradigm for build­ing PEM elec­tro­lyz­ers, intro­duced by Smoltek’s solu­tion, many sur­round­ing com­pon­ents can be improved for great­er effi­ciency. Smol­tek Hydro­gen wants to be part of this broad­er devel­op­ment. Ellinor Ehrn­berg says, “We are at the cen­ter of it all; it’s in iridi­um that things are hap­pen­ing.” This stra­tegic approach pos­i­tions Smol­tek Hydro­gen to lead the way in revo­lu­tion­iz­ing PEM elec­tro­lyz­er pro­duc­tion and improv­ing the over­all effi­ciency of green hydro­gen technology.

Conclusion

This art­icle sum­mar­izes the key points from Ellinor Ehrn­ber­g’s inter­view on the Entre­pren­örsdriv pod­cast. It high­lights how Smol­tek Hydro­gen addresses the crit­ic­al chal­lenge of iridi­um scarcity in green hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, Ehrn­ber­g’s extens­ive back­ground, the com­pany’s stra­tegic growth plans, and the industry’s pos­it­ive feed­back. To gain deep­er insights into Smol­tek Hydro­gen­’s innov­at­ive solu­tions and pro­spects, listen to the full episode: