The Future of Battery, Powered by Sulphur
The world's appetite for batteries is exploding. Electric vehicles alone will demand 3.5 times more battery capacity by 2030, on top of data centres, grid storage, renewable energy—all running on batteries now. While lithium-ion batteries have long dominated the conversation, they pose challenges: flammability risks, limited raw materials, and environmental impact. Luquos Energy, a Hong Kong-based company, asked a different question — what if the solution lies in another element? Since 2014, this team has been focused on solving the world’s most pressing energy storage challenge with a hugely underappreciated resource - sulphur.
Unlike lithium, sulphur is literally everywhere, accessible and affordable as a by-product of oil refining and product of industrial waste. After 10 years of relentless R&D, the Luquos team developed critical membrane and catalyst technologies that have unleashed sulphur’s value in long-duration energy storage. The result is LEAPLUG®, the world’s first sulphur-based flow battery system—an intrinsically safe, low-cost, efficient, durable, and genuinely eco-friendly energy storage solution.
Beyond its abundance, the LEAPLUG® story is best told in numbers: It costs 50% less to produce compared to lithium-ion batteries, and there is zero flammability risk, thanks to water-based electrolytes that simply cannot ignite. It is also 100% recyclable after retirement, leaving zero heavy metal pollution. The breakthrough came in 2021 when the team solved sulphur’s cross-over issue through a highly-selective ion exchange membrane, extending battery lifetime to over 15 years, making commercial-scale sulphur batteries not only possible, but inevitable.
"Keep Up for us means maintaining passion over a decade to incubate technology from a seed to a world-changing product."
LEAPLUG® is already proving itself in real applications around the world. In partnership with Towngas Smart Energy, LEAPLUG® has been powering EV charging infrastructure for over one year in Shenzhen, reducing electricity cost for users by 70% while stabilising the power grid. The upcoming project is to support smart farming in Yuen Long, Hong Kong. Within five years, they plan to achieve gigawatt-level mass production, positioning sulphur-based flow battery as one of the world's major energy storage solutions, and energizing the world with the sustainable power of sulphur.
Sometimes, the solution to a greener, net-zero future is right there, just waiting for someone to ask the right question.
