A North Salt Lake company whose technology once helped NASA pull breathable oxygen from the thin, carbon dioxide-choked air of Mars has opened a new factory of its own, betting that the same electrochemical hardware can be built at industrial scale here on Earth. OxEon Energy opened its new automated advanced manufacturing facility on October 30, with the company describing the move as a step toward commercial-scale production of its solid oxide electrolysis technology.
The opening took place during Utah's inaugural Hard Tech Week, according to TechBuzz News, which reported that attendees were invited to tour the new facility as part of the event. OxEon cofounder and Chief Operating Officer Jessica Elwell said the company is beginning to scale its capabilities and grow its impact on the world's energy economy, and she described the facility as a milestone marking a shift from research and demonstration toward commercial impact.
Elwell said OxEon has more than $36 million in support from the Department of Energy, funding that was announced in March 2024 under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to support automation and manufacturing scale-up of the company's solid oxide electrolysis technology, the outlet reported. A Utah state economic development page, separately, describes a $36 million Department of Energy award to OxEon under the same infrastructure law for its solid oxide electrolysis manufacturing capabilities, though the available material does not clarify whether the figures reflect the same award or additional support.
From Pilot Lines to Gigawatt Ambitions
The original funding initiative established a target of 25 megawatts of annual manufacturing capacity, with OxEon holding a longer-term ambition of reaching gigawatt-scale production, per TechBuzz News. A separate Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity page frames the automation and scale-up effort as the first phase of a broader growth strategy that begins with expanding the pilot manufacturing operation at the North Salt Lake site.
That kind of leap from small pilot lines to serious industrial volume is widely viewed as the central hurdle for the whole solid oxide electrolyzer sector. The Clean Air Task Force notes that while most companies pursuing the technology have already completed pilot projects, and some have even put it into commercial operation with industrial partners, scaling from single-digit-megawatt modules to systems in the hundreds of megawatts remains a defining commercialization challenge. The organization's assessment also finds that gigawatt-scale manufacturing capacity could theoretically be built up in 18 to 36 months, even as broader deployment has been held back by perceptions that the technology is immature and by electrolyzer demand that has only recently picked up.
The Clean Air Task Force assessment also says solid oxide electrolyzer cells may offer a potential 20% electrical-efficiency advantage over competing architectures when they have access to an external source of process heat to generate steam, a technical distinction in the race to industrialize the approach.
The Technology's Proving Ground Was Mars
OxEon's solid oxide electrolysis cells were used in NASA's MOXIE instrument aboard the Perseverance rover, an experiment that demonstrated the ability to extract oxygen from the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere, according to TechBuzz News. Getting there required brutal testing: the company's electrochemical stack underwent dozens of thermal cycles, including exposure to temperatures approaching 800 degrees Celsius and as low as minus 65 degrees Celsius, and engineers also subjected the hardware to vibration and shock testing to simulate the punishment of spaceflight and a Martian landing.
Jeffrey Hoffman, who served as a NASA astronaut for 19 years and flew on five Space Shuttle missions, was deputy principal investigator for the MOXIE experiment. The facility's opening event included a discussion with Hoffman, who recalled an episode in which engineers caught a potentially dangerous computer-code error while testing commands on Earth before they were transmitted to the Perseverance rover, according to the same TechBuzz News account. NASA ultimately approved operational changes to address engineering challenges that arose during MOXIE's run, and Hoffman's broader point, per the outlet, was that future systems built for human Mars exploration will require substantially greater operational reliability than a single experimental unit.
Eyeing Fuel, Trucking, and Defense Markets Back on Earth
Back on Earth, OxEon has identified potential markets in renewable aviation fuel, trucking, marine transportation, and defense applications, with defense use potentially involving synthetic fuel production in remote environments, TechBuzz News reported. The underlying chemistry is the same whether the target is Martian air or industrial gas streams: the technology can process carbon dioxide and water into oxygen, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen, outputs that can serve as building blocks for synthetic fuels and other energy applications.
Utah's Hard Tech Week, during which the facility opened its doors, was organized by 47G and Utah Tech Week, according to the TechBuzz News report. OxEon says it intends to use the North Salt Lake facility to advance its manufacturing capabilities as it works toward those commercial markets.
How OxEon Compares to Europe's Largest Plant
OxEon's 25-megawatt initial target looks modest next to some of the solid oxide electrolyzer sector's biggest plays overseas. Danish company Topsoe inaugurated what it called Europe's largest solid oxide electrolyzer cell stack manufacturing facility in Herning, Denmark, a plant the company says is initially designed to manufacture 500 megawatts of electrolyzers per year across 23,000 square meters, backed by roughly EUR 94 million from the EU Innovation Fund.
Topsoe first announced plans for the Herning facility in May 2022, with construction slated to begin that year and the plant expected to be operational by 2024; the company said the facility was initially designed to manufacture 500 megawatts of electrolyzers per year and, when fully loaded after ten years, could service up to 10 gigawatts of installed capacity at customer sites. Topsoe has also said its SOEC electrolyzers achieve around 20% higher efficiency, which can increase to 30% with steam integration, figures that illustrate the competitive bar OxEon's North Salt Lake operation will ultimately need to clear as it chases its own gigawatt-scale ambitions.
