Hazer Group Ltd (ASX:HZR) has opened a potential pathway to commercialise its Hazer Process, following a proof of concept demonstration using an alternate reactor showed the flexibility of the company's technology.
The Hazer Process is a low-emission hydrogen and graphite production process, and enables the effective conversion of natural gas and similar feedstocks into hydrogen and high quality graphite, using iron ore as a process catalyst.
The company has now successfully produced graphite and hydrogen in a Rotary Tube Reactor (RTR).
The RTR reactor system is based on moving bed reactor technology, using a mechanical device for mixing.
The demonstration was undertaken at a U.S. based commercial scale equipment supplier on a toll basis, with the Hazer Process tested using an existing off-the-shelf reactor configuration that is in common use across various commercial scale industries.
Mark Edwards, acting chief executive officer, commented: "This proof of concept demonstration using an alternate reactor demonstrates the flexibility of our technology.
"The very positive outcomes enhance and diversify Hazer’s technology application portfolio and provide increased optionality to support development of different business case opportunities that target specific process integration scenarios."
Testing
Hazer said multiple trials over a week were performed at various reaction conditions, with no operational upsets.
Progressive improvements were made in production capacities, product yields and graphite quality throughout the planned test schedule.
The company added that based on this preliminary test work, system configuration and design improvement opportunities have already been identified.
Production rates
The graphite product harvested directly from the reactor, prior to purification, showed non-optimised purity levels of ca. 84%, based on Thermo-Gravimetric Analyses (TGA) of the product.
X-Ray Diffraction analyses of the graphite also confirmed the highly graphitic nature of the raw graphite material.
These initial purity levels are extremely encouraging, given that Hazer has previously demonstrated the production of both 99% and 99.95% purity graphite from raw 86% graphite.