UCI Launches Green Hydrogen Production Project with US EAT Institute: "Commercialization After Pilot Testing"

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] UCI is teaming up with a U.S. research institute to kick off the commercialization of green hydrogen production using waste resources.

On the 11th, UCI announced that its subsidiary BioX and EAT (Electro-Active Technologies), under the U.S. National Laboratory, have begun work on domestic technology transfer for hydrogen production and pilot testing (pre-use inspection) for green hydrogen commercialization. BioX and EAT plan to conduct various tests, including drone flights, using hydrogen produced from Korean food waste as early as the end of this month.

To this end, Dr. Borole of EAT and others visited Korea for a month-long schedule and signed an industry-academia-research cooperation agreement among Ewha Womans University Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation, BioX, UCI, and EAT research institute for the "localization and commercialization of hydrogen generation systems in Korea." Currently, a laboratory has been set up within the College of Engineering at Ewha Womans University, and hydrogen test production has commenced.

EAT's green hydrogen production system is already known to be on the verge of commercialization in the United States. BioX plans to complete this Korean pilot test and accelerate domestic commercialization.

A company official stated, "Compared to reforming hydrogen, called 'gray hydrogen,' which emits a large amount of greenhouse gases during production, green hydrogen produced by the water electrolysis method using food waste promoted by BioX emits almost no greenhouse gases and consumes less electricity, making it a future-oriented hydrogen production technology. UCI plans to achieve meaningful performance growth in future energy technologies such as hydrogen production together with BioX," he said.

The microbial electrolysis hydrogen production technology owned by EAT was first developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a national science and technology research institute under the U.S. Department of Energy. The original research team spun off to establish EAT in 2017 to commercialize hydrogen and holds an exclusive license for the technology. BioX holds a 14.7% stake in EAT and has secured exclusive domestic business rights, currently pursuing simultaneous commercialization in Korea and the United States.