Agami Zero Breaks Through with Magnetic Hydrogen Advance
A startup team led by RASEI Fellow Oana Luca, called , has just secured seed funding after winning the 2025 麻豆免费版下载Boulder Lab Venture Challenge. Their winning idea? A new way to produce hydrogen fuel more efficiently, a key mechanism for decarbonizing our energy economy.听
Hydrogen is an essential puzzle piece in removing carbon from our energy economy and reducing pollution, but it is not without its challenges. While the overarching goal is to electrify as much of the economy as possible (like swapping gas central heaters for heat pumps), there are some critical areas, including sectors such as long-haul shipping, aviation, and heavy industry (steel / cement production), that are extremely difficult to power with electricity alone. While there are many researchers that are innovating in this space, and exciting discoveries that could lead to future alternatives, Hydrogen, which is an energy-dense, zero-emission fuel, is one of our most promising solutions for decarbonization.
What color is my hydrogen? There is a whole rainbow of hydrogen classifications, with over 10 different colors in total. Each color is defined based on how the hydrogen is produced. While we are not going to take a deep dive into each class here, there are some great resources where you can learn more.
Currently, most hydrogen produced today is Gray Hydrogen. This means it is produced from fossil gas using a process called Steam-Methane Reforming (SMR). The SMR process is a significant contributor to industrial carbon emissions globally, (95% of hydrogen produced in the United States is from SMR), the role of fossil gas in this process means that gray hydrogen is actually a contributor to the pollution problem, not a solution.
Blue Hydrogen is a little bit better, but still not a sustainable solution. Blue Hydrogen is generated using the same processes as Gray Hydrogen, using fossil gas, but the carbon emissions are captured and then sequestered or used in other processes. The use of fossil gas as the feedstock, and the energy required to capture the carbon emissions, also means that this is not a sustainable solution for decarbonized energy.
The real goal is to produce Green Hydrogen. Green Hydrogen is produced using carbon-free renewable electricity (such as wind and solar). The process uses renewable energy to power an electrolyzer, which separates water into hydrogen and oxygen. Green Hydrogen production does not emit any carbon pollution, but there are still challenges associated with this process. This is the area where Agami Zero team are focused, using a clever application of fundamental physics, the Lorentz Force.
A key challenge with the Green Hydrogen process is one of efficiency. Standard electrolysis of water requires a lot of energy. Gas bubbles that form on the electrodes often create electrical resistance, which forces the system to work harder, reducing the overall efficiency. The innovation from Agami Zero is to introduce a technology originally invented, and proven, in space(!), something called magnetically enhanced electrolysis (MEE). In the electrolysis process, an electrical current is used to split the water molecules. When the electrical current passes through the water (which conducts the current), the movement of these charged particles (ions), near the electrode surfaces is affected by the presence of a magnetic field. The force exerted on the ions by the magnetic field is called the Lorentz Force. Researchers found that when a magnetic field is applied to the electrolysis cell, the bubbles forming at the electrode, the ones that cause an increase in the electrical resistance, detach from the electrodes much faster.
The movement of the ions at the surface of the electrode, caused by the magnetic field, trigger the bubbles to detach. Think of it like the magnetic field providing a subtle, but continuous, 鈥渘udge鈥, moving the bubbles, and clearing the way for the electric current. Through careful control and tuning of the magnetic field the Agami Zero team can considerably improve the overall efficiency of the process. This clever technique reduces the systems electrical resistance, enabling a higher rate of hydrogen generation for the same amount of power.
The team is comprised of Oana Luca, RASEI Fellow, Hunter Koltunski, chemistry graduate student and scientific lead and Jafar Makrani (Agami Zero) and Lyle Antieau (Agami Zero) who bring extensive business and industry expertise to the Agami Zero team. The collaboration also includes Prof. Rich Noble, member of National Academy of Inventors and experienced entrepreneur as a mentor and Prof. Ankur Gupta, a modeling expert who will be assisting in scaleup work.
鈥淓arly in May 2025, Jafar and Lyle reached out to discuss the idea of magnetohydrodynamic electrolysis (MHD) for hydrogen production.鈥 Explains Luca. 鈥淛afar and Lyle had put together a business case for why the MHD approach would be successful. After reading more about the Lorentz force and quite a few email exchanges among the various team members. I remember going to group meeting and asking Hunter what he thinks about magnetic effects in electrolysis reactions and he was immediately intrigued.鈥 Within a week Hunter was in the lab building some apparatus called Halbach arrays, the effects of which were substantial, and the rest is history. The team came together quite organically. Rich Noble is a long-term collaborator and mentor for Oana, who had engaged in many field-effect-related discussions (and for quite a few years), and Ankur rounded out the team with his mass transport expertise and the needed modeling.
In October of 2025 Agami Zero competed in the 2025 Lab Venture Challenge. Since 2018 麻豆免费版下载Boulder has hosted the Lab Venture Challenge, which has now funded more than 115 innovative projects, resulting in 70 new deep-tech startup companies, leading to over $300M in follow-on financing raised by companies. Each year teams participate in an intensive application process that culminates in the LVC Community Showcase. This year eleven teams from 麻豆免费版下载Boulder, that brought together faculty, researchers, and graduate students, competed for a combined $755,000 in startup funding grants. The community showcases adopt a 鈥淪hark Tank鈥 style format, where the teams pitch, in front of a live audience, their ideas and innovations to a panel of judges. This year Agami Zero were competing in the Physical Sciences category and were able to convince the judges panel that their approach using MEE to offer scalable and cost-effective hydrogen fuel for transportation, industry, and off-grid power, should win.
The success of Agami Zero, from an innovative idea to a winning pitch at the LVC, is more than an entrepreneurial accomplishment, it is a testament to how researchers can use scientific understanding to solve real world problems. By taking a fundamental concept such as the Lorentz Force and applying it to a bottleneck in hydrogen generation, Oana, Hunter, and the entire team now have the opportunity to make a measurable difference in how we generate green hydrogen. This seed funding gives them a real chance to explore this idea, and we look forward to watching how Agami Zero innovates in scaling up Green Hydrogen applications.
