Twelve years since its launch, Atlantic Hydrogen Inc. is going through a watershed year.

The Fredericton company, whose technology extracts carbon from natural gas, is now in a key phase of commercializing both its platforms. And as it moves forward on these operational plans, AHI is working on a $10 million fundraising round and hoping to close the first tranche by September.

“We’ve been around a little longer than some and hope to be in a position soon to talk about some exciting things,” said David Wagner, President and CEO of the company.

In 2000, AHI began to commercialize research carried out at the University of New Brunswick on a system designed to enhance the efficiency of natural gas. Today, it has 30 employees, including 21 engineers and three PhDs.  Basically, the technology separates carbon and hydrogen atoms at the molecular level from natural gas, breaking out carbon and leaving free hydrogen in the gas mix. The result is natural gas enriched with hydrogen, which means it burns more cleanly than standard natural gas.

AHI is now commercializing the technology in two platforms, and it is reaching a critical phase in each.

CarbonSaver P, which is operating in Fredericton, decarbonizes natural gas using plasma science so the result is a cleaner form of natural gas. This is in line with AHI’s original vision, and the company is talking with potential commercial partners about doing field trials. Wagner said he expects to have an agreement in place this year.

The second platform is CarbonSaver T, which Wagner called, ``The Carbon Maker’’.  It extracts ``carbon black’’, an industrial product used for such tasks as strengthening the rubber in tires, from natural gas. And, as the price of natural gas has fallen by $2 to $3 in the past few years, the economic model of CarbonSaver T has risen strongly because its feedstock is so much cheaper.

AHI has had the technology validated by an independent lab, which has determined that AHI can produce carbon black equivalent in quality to that produced by oil. Again, AHI is now looking for a large industrial partner, likely in North America, to work with it on rolling out the technology in a commercial project. It already has commercial relationships with such companies as Encana of Calgary, National Grid of the U.K. and Columbian Chemicals of Marietta, Georgia.

Since the beginning of the year, Wagner has been working on a fundraising of $10 million, one that could well include out-of-province venture capital firms for the first time in the company’s history. He hopes the round will include a few tranches, wrapping up in early 2013. If successful, it will be one of the largest fundraisings ever in the region and would be the largest since another cleantech company, LED Roadway Lighting of Halifax, raised $12 million last summer (unless, of course, another Atlantic Canadian company raises more than that this year).

The figure is not unrealistic given AHI’s success in raising money in the past. So far, it has brought in a total of $32 million including non-dilutive financing (by which people usually mean non-repayable money received from government). More than half of the funding has come from selling shares to investors. While most of these are angels, including some from outside the region, the investors have included the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation ($500,000 comprising two rounds) and Halifax-based power company Emera Inc., which has an undisclosed stake in the organization. 

Wagner said the funding should last the company about 36 months, but it depends on how the CarbonSaver platforms are rolled out. Right now, the goal is to keep the company moving forward through a watershed year.