H2G Green and A*STAR ink biomass-to-hard carbon deal

They will now scale up to accelerate the commercialisation pathway.

H2G Green Limited and its subsidiary Green Energy Investment Holding Private Limited (GEIH) have entered into a licence agreement with Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) to commercialise biomass-to-hard carbon technology for sodium-ion batteries.

“GEIH will commercialise a proprietary treatment process by A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (A*STAR IMRE) to purify biochar, a byproduct, into high-value hard carbon material for market use,” H2G Green said in a bourse filing.

Hard carbon materials are usually used as anodes for batteries such as sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries.

Following this development, the companies will begin the next phase of scaling up to accelerate the commercialisation of the biochar purification process. They will specifically focus on producing hard carbon as anodes for use in sodium-ion batteries.

“An earlier exploratory phase found that the hard carbon GEIH produces tends to be superior to existing commercial materials due to a high graphite content, which makes the material favourable for anodes in sodium-ion batteries,” H2G Green said.

“These have possible applications for grid-scale energy storage, electric vehicles, and consumer electronics. The abundance of sodium makes sodium-ion batteries a more sustainable alternative to lithium-ion batteries,” it added.