PETALING JAYA: NanoMalaysia Bhd will launch its latest innovation, the HyPEReactor, which is expected to be a game changer in the Asean region, tomorrow
CEO Dr Rezal Khairi Ahmad said the solid-state-based hydrogen reactor was developed by its agency and its partners.
He explained that the innovation underwent development since 2016, through various stages of construction and was launched in a primordial prototype form a few years back.
The reactor has been refined to make it commercially viable and is now ready to be launched.
Rezal said the reactor requires water and certain raw materials that will generate hydrogen which can be converted into electricity by pairing it with a fuel cell.
“This version can be deployed across multiple sectors, even in the rural areas for rural electrification. That’s how robust and practical our solution is as opposed to (using) pipelines that are needed to transport hydrogen from end to end.
“What we have here is a portable reactor that can be used for multi-purposes. We can also use the reactor to power vehicles by plugging it into hydrogen fuel cells in buses, cars and even motorbikes. This is a Malaysian propriety technology that we hope can game change, not only in Malaysia but in the (Asean) region.
“We are ready to launch it for the interest of investors and potential users. (It is a) practical prototype for industry and market,” he told SunBiz.
Rezal said the patent is owned by NanoMalaysia, and will be accessible as an open IP for multiple licensing.
“It is not exclusively deployed to one particular company, we are opening for whoever wishes to uptake it and offtake it for various application,” Rezal said, adding that it is open to talking to interested companies.
Currently, he said that it is in “heavy discussions” with a few local players such as Gentari, Tenaga Nasional and UMW. He reckoned that a few agreements will be finalised within a few months.
Rezal shared that it is also in talks with several other companies but declined to reveal any details. In addition, it has received potential investment interest from companies in Australia, Japan and Europe.
Meanwhile, Rezal opined that Malaysia’s neighbouring countries, namely Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, are lagging behind in terms of a creating a viable national strategy for hydrogen in their respective countries.
He pointed out that Malaysia, which has already announced its National Energy Transition Roadmap, has “a leg up” in the region due to the outlined national strategy in terms of renewable energy.
“We hope that Malaysia can play a leading role in Asean. However, our agency aspires to be play a leading role in Asia-Pacific because there’s a vast opportunity for us to look into, especially in Singapore, South Korea and Japan, which have invested in the hydro economy for more than a decade,” he added.
Rezal said that the nations are consumers of hydrogen, rather than producers, due to the exorbitantly high cost of energy in their respective countries.
“Companies from those nations are investing out to produce hydrogen so that it can be transported back to their respective domains to be used. So this is also the reason why we expediting the formulation of the roadmap and also execution of the roadmap so that we are able to tap onto this emerging market in those three countries.
“The whole idea of the roadmap if we were to segmentise it, Malaysia produces hydrogen at a certain scale which we can then sell. The international transaction which will increase the national revenue, so we can develop our domestic ecosystem over the same time in the span of 30 years,” he said.