Victoria Xu, Co-Founder of Green Hydrogen Start-Up, CleanInnoGen

Episode #11 CleanInnoGen

If green hydrogen will be the fuel of the future, many technological breakthroughs will be needed. Deeptech ventures are charting a course through the outer reaches of thermo-chemical engineering to a new era of net zero energy abundance. Today, Co-Hosts Braden Kemp and Tracy Morningstar take you to the industrial frontier with Victoria Xu, impact entrepreneur, angel investor and Founder of CleanInnoGen.

As noted by Foresight Canada (CleanInnoGen was a Foresight 50 2023 Honouree): "CleanInnoGen helps to decarbonize heavy industries like steel and cement by using their waste heat to drive a chemical process, the copper-chlorine cycle, that produces green hydrogen and oxygen on site. The hydrogen and oxygen can be used in the industry’s process for fuel switching to a non-carbon source and for improved combustion efficiency, thus helping to decarbonize their operation. The process uses significantly less electricity than water electrolysis."

Themes we encounter in this conversation with Victoria:

• The promise of green hydrogen
• Balancing entrepreneurship and angel/impact investing
• The intersection of green hydrogen and electric vehicles/electrification
• Hydrogen storage and transportation requirements and costs
• Closed loop systems (utilizing waste heat from heavy industry for decarbonization)
• Circular business models, time to market, demonstration markets
• Why the notorious “valley of death” is even more challenging for deeptech startups
• Capital-intensive physical technologies.

Quick Links and References:

• The CleanInnoGen (CIG) official website
• CEMEX Ventures and Foresight Canada entries on CIG
• On hydrogen and green hydrogen (MIT Climate Portal)
• Key vocabulary: Water Electrolyzers (USA - ENERGY.GOV), Steam Methane Reforming - SMR (Wikipedia), Thermochemical Water Splitting (USA - ENERGY.GOV), Circular Economics (ENR - Government of Canada), Technology Readiness Level - TRL scale (Innovation Canada)
• Hydrogen Production Pathways backgrounder (NRC)
• Thermochemical Hydrogen Production (Ontario Tech University)

Acknowledgments

CleanInnoGen secured $25,000 in matching, performance-based seed funding from NCFDC's thriveFORWARD initiative, with the support of FedDev Ontario and the Government of Canada's Jobs and Growth Fund (JGF).

Laboratory work to further commercialization of this technology is being carried out by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL).

The Executive Producer of the Frontier Entrepreneurship Podcast is Robert Washburn. Special thanks to NCFDC’s Victoria Pichler, Daniela Scoppa, Sanjay Deoram and John Hayden. This project is made possible with the support of FedDev Ontario and the Government of Canada.

For more information on our podcast, including co-host biographies, click here.

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