B. Truong, D. Stack, P. Stephenson
Electrified Thermal Solutions,
United States
Keywords: electrify industry, Joule Hive thermal battery, high temperature energy storage, long duration
Summary:
According to the 2022 “Net Zero Heat” report by McKinsey, 50% percent of global energy consumption is for heating and cooling in 2019. About 70% of this energy is from burning fossil fuel, responsible for 45% of all energy-related annual CO2 emission. The same report estimated that deployment of 2-8 TW of thermal energy storage (TES) by 2040 is required. Currently, no affordable technology can provide heat from low temperature (1200⁰C heat). ETS is developing the Joule Hive™ Thermal Battery (JHTB): an affordable and reliable technology that converts and stores cheap, renewable electricity as high-temperature heat. The poster will provide information about the JHTB technology, its history of development and what the future looks like for its deployment to decarbonize industry, including information as shown below. The JHTB is a simple and elegant combination of thousands-year-old technology (bricks) with a modern technology (semi-conductor doping). Based on a decade of research at MIT, we have shown that we can dope oxide bricks to make them electrically conductive brick (E-Brick). These E-Bricks act as the heat source, storage media, and heat exchange to provide direct process heat up to 1700⁰C. The JHTB power ranges between 1 to 200 MWth, with duration up to tens of hours, enabling very affordable high temperature energy storage and on-demand heat. ETS has developed software tools to locate regions of low-cost renewables and run technoeconomic case studies for co-located industries. ETS is current building and testing the near 100kW Pilot Prototype (one to two stacks of full-size E-bricks, each >1m height) that will reach TRL6 in Q2 of 2023. The next project is the first 5MW-25MWh Commercial Demonstration Product (CDP) with the target operation date in 2024. The successful CDP would accelerate deployment of one or more commercial JHTBs in 2025 and beyond. The JHTB utilizes the innovative E-bricks to offer the best characteristics across cost (target 10-15$/kWh of storage in the long term) and application temperature in air and/or CO2 (>1500⁰C - compared with most other technology that are limited to 20-year lifetime. Hydrogen is the only other technology that could meet these characteristics but is far less cost effective due to poor efficiency and high capex. With respect to market, ETS has already identified many locations in the U.S. where the operational strategy of buying low-cost renewable electricity and supplying heat to customers’ processes would enable them to save money and reduce/eliminate their Scope 1 emission. We are actively pursuing industrial heat customers in these locations with the goal of deploying at least two JHTBs by 2025.