The directors of Hydrobe® were thrilled to be the winner of the Curtinnovation Awards Trailblazer Award, presented at Curtin University in Western Australia on Friday, 20 October 2023.
The Curtinnovation Awards recognise and celebrate individuals and teams developing new innovations through research, study, or work at Curtin University that could significantly benefit society.
The judges chose the Hydrobe® breakthrough as the worthy recipient, acknowledging that finding ways to capture and recycle carbon discharged by heavy industries is critical to achieving net zero emissions targets.
The Award recognised the innovative nature of the Hydrobe® process to offer a novel and sustainable approach to decarbonization that uses a biological process to convert carbon into algal biomass, without generating new carbon.
Hydrobe® is using Curtin research to quantify and improve the effectiveness of
recycling carbon into organic carbon while co-producing hydrogen. As Hydrobe's core technology doesn't require high heat or pressure, the cost, size and energy footprint of large-scale photosynthetic reactor systems is reduced. A recent independent study has confirmed the viability of Hydrobe's process at scale, and an ability to produce hydrogen for less than USD$2 per kilogram.
The Curtinnovation Awards are a celebration of innovation, entrepreneurship and the remarkable potential that emerges when academia and industry join forces.
Celebrating the win were team members: Duncan Anderson, Associate Professor Tejas Bhatelia, Brent Bonadeo, Dr Sufia Hena, Dr Nadia Leinecker, Dr Milinkumar Shah, and Jaco Zandberg.
A video of the project that screened at the Curtinnovation Awards Gala Ceremony can be viewed here.