A company in South Korea’s Yeosu industrial complex has shown a mobile hydrogen system that starts from a waste stream, silicon recovered from end of life solar panels, and ends with electricity from a fuel cell, with a reusable by-product on the side. On 13 October 2026 Coins, based in the Yulchon 1 industrial complex in Yeosu, demonstrated the containerised unit, and it plans three more demonstrations at the Yeosu Expo site on 21 October.
Waste silicon in, hydrogen and power out
The process recovers silicon from waste solar panels and reprocesses it, using a patented technology, into a powder the company calls nano silicon. The powder reacts with a sodium hydroxide solution to release hydrogen, and the hydrogen feeds a fuel cell that produces electricity. The system is built on a patented technology from a Hong Kong partner, and Coins packages it in a container so it can be placed where the hydrogen is needed, at industrial sites and on islands, without large scale hydrogen transport and storage.
The company’s chief executive, Choi Myung-hwan, said the significance lies in recovering waste panels as a new energy source, and that the aim is a model in which hydrogen is produced where it is needed and the electricity and heat are used there too. Coins also plans to supply the hydrogen to fuel cell forklifts, drones and ships, and to regions that lack hydrogen refuelling infrastructure.
What one kilogram of silicon can yield
The demonstration gave no output figures, but the chemistry sets a ceiling. Silicon reacts with sodium hydroxide and water to form sodium silicate and hydrogen, Si + 2NaOH + H2O giving Na2SiO3 + 2H2, which means two moles of hydrogen for every mole of silicon. The table applies that ratio to one kilogram of silicon, assuming complete conversion and a fuel cell efficiency of 50 percent, which is an assumption, not a Coins figure.
| Per kilogram of silicon | Maximum, complete conversion |
|---|---|
| Hydrogen produced | 0.144 kg, about 1.6 cubic metres at standard conditions |
| Energy in that hydrogen (lower heating value) | About 4.8 kWh |
| Electricity at an assumed 50 percent fuel cell efficiency | About 2.4 kWh |
| Sodium hydroxide consumed | About 2.85 kg |
| Sodium silicate formed | About 4.35 kg |
Scaled up under the same assumptions, one megawatt hour of electricity would take about 420 kg of silicon, which releases about 60 kg of hydrogen, and would consume about 1.2 tonnes of sodium hydroxide and form about 1.8 tonnes of sodium silicate. Those quantities are an upper bound on efficiency and a lower bound on consumables, since a real unit will not convert everything, and they give the scale of the logistics a mobile unit has to handle: a few hundred kilograms of silicon and a tonne of alkali for each megawatt hour.
The by-product is the larger stream
The same arithmetic shows why the by-product matters. Each kilogram of silicon yields about 4.35 kg of sodium silicate, so the material that leaves the unit outweighs the silicon that enters it by more than four to one. Coins says it is working to reuse the sodium silicate as a material for concrete and binders, which turns that mass into a second product line and supports its description of a circular energy system. The company gives no figures yet on the quantity or the buyers.
That is also where the unit differs from electrolysis, which consumes water and electricity. Here the consumables are silicon and sodium hydroxide, so the supply of recovered silicon and the handling of the alkaline solution will decide the economics, and both are areas where a container based design has an advantage in keeping operations contained at one site.
What the next demonstrations can show
The company has not yet published capacity, silicon consumption per hour, sodium hydroxide handling, cost or the electricity output of the unit. Those are the numbers that will show how it compares with delivered hydrogen at remote sites, and the 21 October demonstrations are the next dated opportunity to show them. For related on-site hydrogen questions, see the 1:20 test of hydrogen leaks in a refuelling area. Source: report of the Coins demonstration, published 14 October 2026.
Add EnergyNews.biz as a preferred source on Google
