The fire. The wheel. The domestication of wheat. The invention of language and writing. Numbers, algebra, the printing press, penicillin. Our first journey into space. The curiosity of Homo sapiens has always driven our progress as a species, fueled by small discoveries that changed everything. However, such milestones rarely happen by chance: they are all due to the knowledge we have accumulated over centuries and millennia of evolution. Today’s complex societies stand on the countless building blocks laid by those who came before us, often without knowing what the consequences of their actions would be.
The same applies to science: we move forward thanks to the cooperation of thousands of people who, step by step and day by day, contribute small pieces to a vast building called knowledge.
In order to take up the challenge of producing green hydrogen, someone first had to discover hydrogen. Someone had to understand its potential as an energy vector, and also someone had to discover electrolysis, a process to split water into its most basic components.
Before we could even consider designing a prototype electrolyser that avoids the use of perfluorinated substances, someone had to consider the toxicity of PFAS and similar synthetic compounds. Someone had to study how ‘forever chemicals’ resist degradation and accumulate in the environment and living organisms. Before ASTERISK came to life, the European Union had already recognised the need to regulate the use of such substances.
Before our consortium decided to use abundant metals like nickel or iron, someone had to understand which minerals make up our planet and how much of each we could find and exploit. Someone had to point out their importance and regulate their use.
We move forward thanks to the cooperation of thousands of people who, step by step and day by day, contribute small pieces to a vast building called knowledge
Before we could explore the use of seawater for electrolysis, with all the technological challenges that this entails, humanity first had to understand the importance and value of fresh water as a limited resource that must be preserved.
To bring a project like ASTERISK to life, in short, we had to learn a lot about our planet. We had to admit that our society needed a new energy model, and we had to commit to change.
And, as if this series of coincidences was not enough, for the Clean Hydrogen Partnership and the European Union to support us, we had to be able to stand up and say: “It’s risky, but we can do it”. And that, without any doubt, happened thanks to ANEMEL, our first and pioneering project to produce clean hydrogen from dirty waters.
A shared challenge, but different backgrounds
With ANEMEL, we laid the foundations for our goal: to contribute to one of the great challenges of the energy transition, developing storage solutions to balance the fluctuating supply and demand of renewable energy sources.
However, as the title suggests, while we come from ANEMEL, we are different. So, what are the novelties in ASTERISK?
ANEMEL is funded by the European Innovation Council, an organisation established to support the commercialisation of high-risk, high-impact technologies across the European Union.
ASTERISK, on the other hand, is co-funded by the European Commission and the Clean Hydrogen Partnership—a public-private initiative that supports research and innovation in hydrogen production technologies.
Seawater: the final frontier
As mentioned at the beginning, producing green hydrogen first requires water. While many technologies are available today to obtain hydrogen via electrolysis, the vast majority rely on fresh water, which is a scarce resource on our planet. Less than 3% of Earth’s water is fresh, and most of that is inaccessible, stored in glaciers and polar ice.
This precious resource should be preserved for essential uses such as human consumption, livestock, and agriculture, and not for energy production.
That’s why ANEMEL aims to design an electrolyser capable of producing green hydrogen using dirty or low-quality water with a composition similar to seawater.
Now, with ASTERISK, we want to go one step further and produce hydrogen directly from seawater: our researchers will collect samples from three locations in the Mediterranean Sea, analyse their composition, and explore how to perform electrolysis without corroding the electrolyser components due to salinity.
What defines a technology, in scientific terms is its maturity, measured by its Technology Readiness Level (TRL). From conception to implementation, a technology goes through different phases or levels. Moving up the TRL scale enables us to measure the results of our project more concretely and ensure the success of our efforts.
Our goal at ANEMEL is to progress from TRL1, the lowest level, to TRL3, where we are committed to conducting experimental proof of concept for our technology. In ASTERISK, however, our objective is to reach TRL 4, validating the technology in a laboratory environment under highly realistic conditions.
A small brick
At ASTERISK, we are not seeking glory, aiming to be remembered as “the first to do something”. As scientists, our goal is simple: to lay a small brick. To contribute, in our own way, to the growing body of our species and to do so in a manner that supports solutions to the major challenges we face today, such as the energy transition.
A small brick may not seem like much, but it is more than we had yesterday—and that, for us, is enough.
Contact for media:
ASTERISK Press Office
Fernando Gomollón-Bel and Lucía Casas Piñeiro