Yusuf Furkan Ergür

A gasoline-engine system developed in the third year of high school placed sixth in Türkiye among 256 projects in a joint TÜBİTAK and Ministry of Energy competition. Press coverage of the time reported roughly 22% more power and 3% fuel savings in a motorcycle application.

The KOSGEB entrepreneurship program is an early record of technical curiosity moving into commercialization discipline — the beginning of thinking about an engineering solution together with a business model, a customer need and an investment plan.

The H₂ Summit talk delivered in 2015 is an early public-narrative record in the hydrogen field, showing that the hydrogen focus existed before the patents and industrial projects that followed.

Launched in January 2016, the project “Hydrogen Production from Exhaust Gas and Its Use as Fuel” was built on evaluating the water–gas shift reaction in the exhaust line, separating the resulting hydrogen with a selective membrane and feeding it back as fuel.

• Treating heat and waste gas not merely as emissions but as a secondary energy source.
• Defining the need for a selective membrane to separate hydrogen from gas mixtures.
• A platform approach that opened from engine applications to biogas, cement, iron & steel and textiles.

The project “Hydrogen Production and Electricity Generation from Flue and Landfill Gas” won the Energy Efficiency category of the Smart City Idea and Project Competition affiliated with İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality, İSBAK and BTM.

Technical presentations of the same period focused on turning waste-incineration plants, biogas lines and flue gases into an input for the energy system. The aim was not only to cut emissions but to create additional economic value from gas and heat flows already present in the plant.

• Measuring the chemical composition of the waste stream and identifying separable hydrogen potential.
• Designing the gas-cleaning line together with energy generation.
• Combining environmental benefit and operating economics in a single smart-city model.

Yusuf Furkan Ergür was selected for the Forbes Türkiye 30 Under 30 list at age 25 as the founder of Phoenix Energy. The profile carried a technology journey spanning an early engine project to a cement-plant flue-gas application to a wide audience.

The TR201917895A2 filing with a priority date of 18 November 2019 turned the separator approach — used to produce hydrogen from cement-plant waste gas — into intellectual-property infrastructure.

• The patent turns a lab idea into a repeatable process architecture.
• It creates a usage framework adaptable to cement, iron & steel, glass, biogas and thermal plants.
• It lays the groundwork for the later pure-hydrogen, methanol and waste-heat patent families.

A guest article published on eGirişim argued that waste, biogas and waste gases could be treated as raw materials in the hydrogen economy of the future. Energy and natural-resources summits and industry meetings of the same period carried the technology narrative to industrial and investment circles.

• Seeing H₂S and other components in biogas not merely as treatment cost but as an energy opportunity.
• Using hydrogen recovered from landfill gas for fuel cells or on-site electricity.
• Addressing industry through payback period as well as technical benefit.

The “Green Energy” project featured in OİB's 2021 catalog framed hydrogen production at a biogas plant, on-site electricity generation and routing surplus hydrogen to fuel-cell vehicles as one ecosystem.

Phoenix Energy completed the Mercedes-Benz Türk Ventures and Fark Labs Tekmer Acceleration and Investment Program, pitching before the jury on Demo Day, where seven startups took the stage. This was a period of intensifying contact with automotive manufacturers, investment programs and international institutions — the stage where the technology learned to adapt to corporate procurement and investment processes.

The Fortune Türkiye 2022 selection placed Yusuf Furkan Ergür on the 40 Under 40 list for his work in energy technologies, associated with the membrane approach developed for electrolysis devices and the goal of industrial commercialization.

Phoenix Energy won the Scale-Up category of TechXtile Start-Up Challenge 2022 with a project aiming to supply green thermal energy to textile-plant dyehouse and drying ovens at lower cost than natural gas.

• 1st place in the Scale-Up category.
• TRY 100,000 additional BTSO support.

On 17 May 2022 the talk “The Most Profitable Return on Harm Done to Nature: The Phoenix Venture” was held at Bursa Technical University. On 17 November 2022 the Hydrogen Technologies Association bulletin published the interview “New Technologies in Hydrogen Production” with Phoenix Energy co-founders.

• Knowledge sharing with academia: how a technology idea becomes a field application and a venture.
• Technical debate with industry associations: membranes, electrolysis and production cost.
• Transfer to young entrepreneurs: problem selection, field validation and intellectual property.

At Sust'INO VIII, held at the İYTE Show Center on 5 December 2023, the presentation “Multi-purpose Membrane Technologies for Hydrogen Production” combined hydrogen separation, electrolysis and industrial application experience with a sustainability focus.

Phoenix Energy was among the finalist startups under the Planetary Health theme. Yusuf Furkan Ergür presented the technology narrative around the proprietary palladium-alloy membrane, hydrogen production and the decarbonization of heavy industry.

In 2024, a university–industry application carried out in Tekirdağ was announced publicly: converting carbon monoxide leaving factories into hydrogen before it enters the atmosphere, and separating it with a membrane.

Deep-tech success is not only visible on stage. Plant discovery, process measurement, safety, communication with the production team and testing the prototype under real conditions are the invisible backbone of commercialization.

Yusuf Furkan Ergür received an award at EIF World Energy Congress 2024 for the hydrogen work carried out in Türkiye. At the congress he joined the hydrogen technologies panel, discussing production, storage, use, safety, regulation and standardization with industry representatives.

Phoenix Enerji presented its approach to producing electricity and hydrogen from industrial waste heat through a small-scale “hydrogen from the heat of tea” demonstration that visitors could experience directly.

• Making the working principle of industrial scale visible through a tabletop experiment.
• Direct interaction with investors, industrialists and technology enthusiasts.
• Turning the waste-heat–electricity–hydrogen link into a simple story.

Phoenix Energy was among the seven startups pitching before the jury in the Startup Pitching competition of ChangeNOW Hubs İstanbul; the company's record states the competition was won, opening new visibility toward the global ChangeNOW stage.

The Phoenix ALER Waste-Heat Recovery System was included in the Solar Impulse Foundation's Efficient Solution portfolio — international recognition across environmental benefit, technical feasibility and economic potential, within a portfolio of more than 1,600 solutions.