Franck Natali - Annual Report 2023

14 April, 2024

Breakthrough Energy Fellowship

Franck Natali with Bill Gates

Principal Investigator Associate Professor Franck Natali completed his Breakthrough Energy Fellowship as one of the inaugural Fellows to participate in this global initiative. Of seven teams selected, only two, Franck included, were from outside the US - the other being from France. The Breakthrough Energy Programme, founded by Bill Gates, provides mentoring, financial and technical support as well as a global network aimed at accelerating early-stage technologies that have the potential to reduce greenhouse gasses by at least 500 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Franck's participation is aimed at accelerating and scaling up a green ammonia production technology to enable the green export of hydrogen and a new clean ammonia liquid fuel for heavy industry. The technology is being commercialised in the spinout company Liquium, co-founded by Franck, Dr Paul Geraghty and Dr Jay Chan, and will be raising capital early in 2024.

One of the highlights of the programme for Franck was "the privilege of presenting Liquium's advances to Bill Gates and the Breakthrough Energy team as we wrapped up and graduated from the Breakthrough Energy Fellowship Programme - showing our ability to grow the team, scale up our technology through the Fellowship, and engaged with key industrial leaders committed to pioneer large-scale ammonia decarbonisation".