Clean Power Hydrogen plc AnClean Power Hydrogen plc provides a further announcement following the incident at the Company’s test site during the third and final stage of the factory acceptance testing (“FAT3”) of its MFE220 1MW unit. As previously announced, structural damage was sustained by the MFE220 electrolyser as it was completing its final testing. The Group’s initial, internal assessment is that a hydrogen-oxygen mixture ignited during an automated depressurisation of the system, causing a loss of containment.
The Company confirms that no personnel were injured and, further, that it has been subsequently established that the Group’s proprietary membrane-free stack and associated separators were not the cause of the incident. The detailed cause of the failure remains under investigation, and the unit remains non-operational until a formal root cause analysis is conducted and a full technical report is prepared and approved by the Board. The Company estimates that this process will be completed by 31 August 2026 and that this will then provide a basis upon which remedial design changes can be effected, after re-testing all proposed solutions at a component level to ensure they meet the required operational and safety standards.
Based on the work undertaken to date and the Company’s accumulated testing data, including the successful factory acceptance test and site acceptance test of the MFE110 unit, the Board believes that the Company’s membrane-free technology has demonstrated significant technical merit and that its existing intellectual property holds significant commercial value; however, it has concluded that the Company does not currently have the financial and scaled-up engineering resources required to complete a full manufacturing and re-testing process to demonstrate commerciality for eventual MFE220 production. Following the decision not to continue manufacturing activities, the Company will adopt a more capital-light business model, focused on its proven research and development capability and ability to successfully licence fully-secured intellectual property. The Company has now been granted 16 patents across 12 jurisdictions, including USA, Japan, India and across the Middle East, with a further 17 patents pending.
The Company also has contractual Licensing arrangements for its technology with three companies covering twelves countries and further copyrights, designs, schematics and other commercial and technology partnerships, along with a decade of accumulated technical know-how. The Company expects to progress a strategy centred on the efficient commercialisation and further global licensing of its intellectual property, with additional strategic and manufacturing partnerships being actively evaluated. Discussions have been held with a number of interested manufacturing parties and remain non-binding at this time.
The Company is continuing to work with its insurance providers to fully assess the insurance claim and potential interim payment relating to the MFE220 testing incident. In parallel, discussions are ongoing with a commercial partner, Lagan MEICA Ltd, who were to take receipt of the MFE220 on successful completion of the FAT3, to establish the position of the sales agreement between the parties.
READ the latest news shaping the hydrogen market at Hydrogen Central
nounces Operational Update Regarding the Third and Final Stage of the Factory Acceptance Testing (“Fat3”) of Its Mfe220 1Mw Unit, source