As part of the Hydrogen Hypothesis challenge, seven teams have been selected to take part in the OZ Minerals’ Think & Act Differently (TAD) accelerator program.

The focus of the challenge, launched at the end of March, was to identify experiments that can demonstrate the safe and effective use of hydrogen in a mining context, with the aim of providing OZ Minerals insight into how hydrogen can be used to support zero or low carbon processes.

It was underlined by the miner’s strategic aspiration to eliminate Scope 1 emissions and strive to systematically reduce Scope 2 and 3 emissions across its value chain.

There were 158 participants in the OZ Minerals and Unearthed Hydrogen Hypothesis challenge, from 35 countries.

Brett Triffett, OZ Minerals’ Transformation Technologist, said: “The mining sector has the opportunity to leverage the progress made in other sectors and explore the use of hydrogen technology in its operations.

“The finalist teams were chosen because they have proposed ideas that have the potential to demonstrate the value hydrogen technologies and applications could create for our industry.

“These teams also demonstrated their willingness to work and learn together with each other and OZ Minerals. The OZ Minerals TAD incubator acceleration program is designed to create as much mutual value as we possibly can, rather than just transacting an experiment for funding.”

The program, according to Triffett, includes frequent capability uplift sessions on a range of topics so participants come out with something more than just a funded experiment.

“Many of the finalist teams are not from the mining industry and are keen to learn more about how the industry works,” he added.

These insights are embedded through regular insights panels with members of OZ Minerals’ broad ecosystem. They also come together with a technical mentor to gain valuable feedback on the technical aspects of their work with one another.

The teams selected are

• Avid Group (Aaron Teo) – Hydrogen powered lighting towers;
• Carbon 280 (Mark Rheinlander) – Hydrilyte storage system – safe hydrogen transport and storage at atmospheric temperature and pressure;
• Carnot (Francis Lempp) – Ultra efficient ceramic engine;
• Fly H2 Aerospace (Mark Van Wyk) – Hydrogen-powered drone;
• OZ Minerals (Steve Day) – Hydrogen highway;
• Supercritical (Luke Tan) – High pressure electrolyser; and
• Yakum Consulting/Queens University (Yeonuk Choi) – Produce clean metal products from concentrate using green hydrogen.