Estonian electrolyser manufacturer Stargate Hydrogen has made its STARDUST® ceramic electrode commercially available, lifting its alkaline stacks to 48 kWh per kilogram of hydrogen while removing iridium and other platinum-group metals from the design.
Stargate Hydrogen said in its launch release that the ceramic coating is built into stacks it already sells rather than added as a separate product line, so customers buying units of up to 0.5 MW receive the efficiency gain without redesigning their systems or changing the balance of plant. Integration into the company’s 5 MW stack is under way.
A ceramic electrode that drops precious metals
PEM electrolysers reach high efficiency but depend on iridium and platinum, metals that are expensive, supply-constrained and largely processed outside Europe. Alkaline systems avoid that dependency and have trailed PEM on efficiency. Stargate Hydrogen’s ceramic electrode closes most of the gap while staying in the alkaline cost class; the formulation is non-precious-metal, proprietary and patent-protected.
“The challenge in alkaline electrode research is achieving higher activity without introducing precious metals. STARDUST® solves both,” said Rainer Küngas, CTO of Stargate Hydrogen. “The ceramic matrix we developed supports a long electrode lifetime while delivering a 48 kWh/kg efficiency uplift at a stack level. That combination, independently confirmed, is what makes this technically significant.”
Less electricity per kilogram of hydrogen
For project developers and EPC contractors the gain lands on electricity consumption per kilogram of hydrogen produced, and from there on the levelized cost of hydrogen. Longer expected electrode life at better conversion rates shifts the economics of projects that have been marginal at current electricity prices.
“STARDUST® is the moment Stargate Hydrogen’s technology becomes something investors and project developers can quantify. Now it can be shipped in every 0.5 MW stack that leaves our factory, and the performance numbers speak for themselves. This is not a roadmap item. It is available today,” said Marko Virkebau, CEO of Stargate Hydrogen.
Coating stacks in Tallinn at 140 MW a year
The electrode is manufactured at the company’s Tallinn factory, which produces 140 MW of stacks annually and can be expanded past 1 GW through incremental investment. The technology is CE certified and compliant with Made in Europe requirements, and Stargate Hydrogen holds IPCEI status, the EU framework for cross-border hydrogen infrastructure. The company announced the launch on 14 October, the Baltic Times reported the following day.
The company supplies precious-metal-free alkaline electrolysers to refining, ammonia, methanol, e-methane and steel producers, with customers including Fortum, Utilitas, ABB and Rockfin across Europe, Turkey and India, and Repsol among its investors. It has also expanded to Riyadh under a memorandum of understanding on Saudi sustainability goals, and has partnered with Hydrogenera on industrial hydrogen projects.
Stargate Hydrogen is one of a group of Estonian hydrogen hardware makers selling abroad, among them generator manufacturer PowerUP and hydrogen drone developer Skycorp. The cleantech sector has become one of the country’s more visible export technology lines.
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