Synergen is an Australian-owned and operated business made up of a team of scientific minds with more than 80 years of collective experience working within the global resources industry. Founders, Christopher Dunks and Dr Geoff Duckworth, have developed the Company’s Thermal Plasma Technology over the last 14 years.

Through a combination of research, innovative ideas, trial and error in the lab, extensive field trials, and close collaboration with our key equipment supplier, the Company has developed its ability to leverage its Thermal Plasma Technology applications platform into multiple high value applications, including:

• Hydrogen and solid carbon production via methane pyrolysis;
• PFAS water treatment and complete contaminant destruction;
• Hazardous and toxic waste destruction; and
• Waste to energy applications including municipal solid waste, tyres and organics.

If you would like to get involved in the IPO, please register below.

Read the conversation:

Morgan McGuire:

“ I'm here with Synergen Met, managing director and CEO Christopher Dunks. Just here to have a brief overview of the company, what they're planning on doing in the renewable space, and also just addressing the recent IPO and discussion about investors and how they can get involved. Chris, how are you this morning?”

Christopher Dunks: 

“Morning Morgan. Great. Thanks for having me on.”

Morgan McGuire: 

“If you wouldn't mind just giving a brief company overview and a bit of an industry overview as well about Synergen Met.”

Christopher Dunks: 

“Sure, sure. So Synergen is based in Brisbane, we've been around for 15 years developing technology in the Cleantech space. So we've developed applications to make hydrogen by splitting methane. We've got an application that destroys this toxic chemical called  PFAS, and we've recently purchased a group, outta the United States. Phoenix Solutions. They've been around for 60 years, strong revenue and profitability and rolling them into the business through this IPO process.

So, we're about 10 people here in Brissy. We were about 15, 16 in Minneapolis and, and we're, we're looking to grow pretty hard and stepping through this IPO process right now. It's pretty exciting.”

Morgan McGuire: 

“Then the IPO went live this week. Mate, would you be able to just kind of give a bit of an overview of what that means for investors?”

Christopher Dunks: 

 “Yeah. So we are raising 20 million dollars coming into the market with about 120 million market cap. Essentially the 20 million that we're raising is going to be, the use of funds, is gonna be our first hydrogen project, which is with a group called *inaudible* Energy based here in Brisbane as well. We've got multiple  PFAS projects that we'll be developing.

We have  PFAS destruction sites that we're developing. One here in *inaudible*, in Brisbane, one in Greenville and South Carolina. And then we've got other development activities around the business. So it's, we've got a really structured use of funds. Basically it means that the company will be generating revenue in the second half of the year from our  PFAS Applications. And really gives us this footprint for growth.”

Morgan McGuire: 

“Mate, I suppose the word  PFAS has been thrown around a little bit lately. If you could just give us a bit of insight into what  PFAS actually is, and how your company's actually looking to remove  PFAS from the environment.”

Christopher Dunks: 

“No worries. So the  PFAS that we're targeting is, is in liquids, so it's in water, it's in waste water from waste dumps. It's in wastewater treatment, plant water. And so essentially what we've created is two applications. One where we concentrate the  PFAS in the water by creating a froth, flotation and floating that froth. And then we take that concentrate and we put it through our plasma system, which exposes it to a very high temperature, which breaks the bonds of the PFAS molecules.

And we can then turn that into something which is less toxic, which is sodium fluoride or calcium fluoride, sodium fluoride's in your toothpaste. And that can be managed by wastewater treatment plants. So we have these two applications. The market's quite significant. It's growing significantly, but the world's kind of waking up to the challenges of the PFAS molecule.

You might see it in the newspapers forever chemicals is what it's called. And there's probably press a couple of times a week, major press in, certainly in the United States, less here in Australia because we're a bit used to it now. But it's becoming very, very, well known as an issue.”

Morgan McGuire: 

“Look, it has been popping up here and there, and I suppose just giving people insight into what the actual structure is. What is PFAS?”

Christopher Dunks: 

“PFAS is actually the name given to many, many different molecules. It's a hydrocarbon, okay, with a fluorine, a fluorine atom that's bonded to this carbon atom.

It's the fluorine, which is the issue, but it's the fluorine that actually gives it the properties that it has, which is why it's being used. It's a very powerful chemical and using it, being used in many different ways. So what we do is we break that flooring carbon bond, and that's a very strong bond and it requires a high temperature.

So we expose it to, in our plasma environment, where the temperatures are high enough to break it. And then we recombine that fluorine with hydrogen. We make hydrogen fluoride, and then we scrub that and we make it sodium fluoride. So we, we kind of go through this multi-step process, making sure when that fluorine breaks, we rebond it with something else and it doesn't reform as something similar to what it originally was.

So it's quite complex. We've got an amazing team of engineers out of the University of Queensland. We've been working with the Australian Research Council for the last three or four years on this. But actually, the ability for us to be able to do this application comes from the 10 years of work that we did in other areas, and it's all very directly applicable.

So in reality, we've been running Synergen for about 15 years. A lot of that history all rolls into these applications that we have right now, and it all comes together. And so that's the PFAS molecule, and really you have to take an approach of how do you destroy it and not allow it to reform once you've destroyed it? And that's what we've done.”

Morgan McGuire: 

“And look, I suppose you, you mentioned about the scrubbing of hydrogen fluoride, you scrub a portion of hydrogen. So in terms of the value add for hydrogen production, how is that going to contribute to the current renewable energy market?  and what do you estimate is the current addressable market for hydrogen production?”

Christopher Dunks: 

“So our hydrogen application is separate from the PFAS. The hydrogen process that we have is a paralysis of methane. So we basically split methane using our plasma system in the absence of any oxygen. And we produce hydrogen gas and carbon black as a solid material which can be sold in the global market.

The contribution we are making is really, to those third-party companies that are looking to decarbonize, and if you look across the gas industry, And the industrial industry, everyone is genuinely looking to decarbonize. We've been to a number of conferences recently where the investment that's going into decarbonization of industry is awesome. It's amazing. It's really positive. These companies are identifying areas where they can do, you know, 3% reduction, 5% reduction. It's not like one 30% reduction. It's all this incremental, but they're investing in all those areas. It's actually really exciting. So our contribution to that is being able to come along and provide an opportunity for natural gas or methane that might be used in, in an application to be converted into hydrogen. And so the emissions that come out of the hydrogen process are using hydrogen as a heating source. There's no carbon dioxide and there's no greenhouse gas emissions. Right? And when we make hydrogen, we make this carbon as well.

And the way that we make the carbon, it's essentially a sequestration of the carbon. So we're not allowing any CO2 formation. Okay? So that's our contribution. We're really working alongside these industry partners, addressable market. It's not really something that we look at necessarily and try to calculate. We know that there's a big market ahead of us. We know that from the interest that we're getting from, from industry, but we are really just taking our approaches each project at a time.”

Morgan McGuire: 

“And it is a bit of an evolving beast within the renewable market and, obviously the hydrogen market, it's having some time to get that significant uptake, but it is moving in the right direction.”

Christopher Dunks: 

“Yeah, it is. So the demand side is the question. That's been asked for the last 12, 18 months as this space has hotted up. Where is the demand coming from? How are we going to address the demand, where does the technology sit globally to be able to address that demand? What are the true and realistic forecasts for being able to produce hydrogen at volume?”

Morgan McGuire: 

“So they're slowly starting to be answered? Those questions. And I guess, what's your point of difference when it comes to the PFAS breakdown? Because I know that there, that is being addressed overseas and some companies and, and governments are starting to really realize that PFAS is a toxic substance we need to do something about. Where are they in relation, to your technology at this point?”

Christopher Dunks: 

“So if we look at others that are doing, that are dealing with the PFAS molecule, they concentrate it. Or they might even absorb it onto activated carbon, but then that goes into landfill. We're not aware of anybody else that can destroy and convert the PFAS molecule in the way we have. So we see ourselves in a very unique space where we can offer this concentration process plus the destruction. Whereas a number of our competitors on the concentration side, they concentrate it down to a product, but then they've gotta put that in landfill.

So there's an interesting conscience that's been generated as well with the customers that we're talking with. They don't want anything to go to landfill for sure. It's a challenge with PFAS if it goes into the landfill. Five years, 10 years, 30 years, 50 years, whenever it's gonna leach. And so that PFAS is ultimately gonna come out of that.

Of where it's been absorbed, and it'll start leeching, and then this whole cycle starts again. It's potentially like an infinite loop. So what we do is we destroy it, and we get rid of it. And, that's where there's a lot of attention, the applications that we have because we're able to get this material and destroy it.

So that's our true point of difference here, and I think it's very significant for us. We're really proud of the work that we've done. Amazing team. And so, yeah, we're rolling this out commercially.”

Morgan McGuire: 

“Chris, I really appreciate you taking the time to give us a bit of an overview of the company and let us know about PFAS destruction. It's a really interesting space to be in. Really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us, Chris.”

Christopher Dunks: 

“No worries Morgan. Appreciate your time too. Thanks, mate.”

Morgan McGuire: 

“To learn more about Synergen Met, or to take up a position, please feel free to contact me directly by clicking the link in the description.”