Sodium Borohydride for Hydrogen Mobility & Compression

Background

Sodium borohydride (NaBH₄) releases hydrogen on contact with water, and the reaction can be driven with an acid instead of a fixed catalyst bed. Since 2022, that one chemistry has carried a five-study arc with Hyundai.

The arc runs on two parallel tracks: an on-board generation system — a program led by Hyundai Rotem with Hyundai Motor Company that I’ve been on for going on five years — and compressor-free high-pressure generation: sequential reactions to 650 bar, the catalyst mechanisms behind 817 bar output, and a scale-up to a working 500 bar refueling system. Both tracks share a byproduct problem: the same reaction makes CO that has to be scrubbed on the reactor’s own heat, and that became its own line of catalyst and patent work.

What I did

• Conceptualization and techno-economic assessment for the 650 bar sequential-compression study.
• Designed and built the reaction apparatus and mechanism experiments behind 817 bar high-purity output.
• First author on the arc’s peak: a 500 bar grid-independent, mobile refueling system with no mechanical compressor.
• Led the CO purification catalyst end to end — catalyst, preparation method, system design, evaluation — filed as a patent application (lead inventor).

Outcomes

The arc’s peak is a working system, not just a lab result:

• 500 bar directly from NaBH₄ hydrolysis — no compressor stage, no grid power. First-author paper in Chemical Engineering Journal.
• The CO purification thread spans a filed patent (lead inventor), a co-authored catalyst paper, and a co-first-authored paper in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (2026).

The on-board generation system was publicly demonstrated at ADEX 2025.

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