Our photoanodes can be configured into many form factors. We developed the SeaFern™ platform for large-scale conversion of sunlight to hydrogen in Libya. This form factor is also preferred for flat roof-tops for big-box warehouses and factories. Capital cost is low, and the embodied energy and carbon in the materials is significantly lower.
Nanoptek was founded by John Guerra in 2002 in Concord, Massachusetts to employ our nanoscale optical technology to produce low-cost hydrogen from just sunlight, water, and minimal electricity, with low or no carbon. Lightfuel was founded in 2016 as a “doing business as” company to commercialize our disruptive technology.
As stated in our 2002 patent, we were, and remain, driven by our conviction that global adoption of clean hydrogen will avert or revert climate change. Founded just after the horrors of 9/11, that event and the subsequent never-ending wars highlighted the need to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. And beyond our shores, the distributive nature of hydrogen that can be produced locally on-site without grid or pipeline will enable countries, especially those without reserves of oil and gas but rich in sunlight, to produce their own hydrogen for use in manufacturing, transportation, or storage of photovoltaic electricity (EES and DES) for a better standard of living.
Nanoptek d.b.a. Lightfuel is headquartered in Concord, Massachusetts, with field offices in Maynard and Shirley Massachusetts, and Paris, France. We are a privately-held C corporation first incorporated in Massachusetts in 2002 and re-incorporated in Delaware in 2007 in preparation for a Series A funding in that year. Earlier funding included competitive grants from NASA (Phase I and II SBIR), the Dept. of Energy, and The Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust (MTC), as well as several generous private investors. The lead Series A investor is The Quercus Trust, with additional investors including MTC (now transferred to MCEC), and all of the same private investors. The Board at present comprises a Series A investor representative and John Guerra. All funding throughout the life of the Corporation has been dedicated to the development of photocatalysts with enhanced efficiency and broadened spectral response to split hydrogen from water with sunlight, and photo-electro-chemical (PEC) hardware platforms, such as the LFG-80LH Solar-Amplified hydrogen generator panels designed to using the photocatalysts to best advantage.
Nanoptek has 9 U.S. patents and 15 international patents, with 6 more pending and applied for, including one more international. The patents include the use of our photocatalysts to clean water and air, in addition to producing hydrogen. Nanoptek’s intellectual property portfolio also includes trade secrets, trademarks ™, and registered trademarks ® in the U.S. and China.
Our Vision:
Nanoptek’s technology, commercialized through Lightfuel products, will provide renewable, carbon-free, low cost hydrogen that will reduce global warming and increase the Nation’s energy security, while improving the lives of countless around the Globe by providing local hydrogen to enable manufacturing and energy management. Additionally, Nanoptek’s visible light photocatalysts that use sunlight to mediate organic pollutants in water, addresses another of the most pressing environmental issues of our day.
We are doing this by hiring excellence, and then providing a workplace that is safe, fair, inspiring, creative, challenging, enabling, and rewarding. The Company strives to follow in the tradition of great American global manufacturing companies by addressing important problems and then requiring and achieving quality and excellence in the products and manufacturing required for the solutions, while providing excellent jobs at all levels for the local communities. Our success will greatly reward today’s investors and future shareholders.