The key to decarbonizing heavy industry, John O’Donnell says, could be hot bricks.
(Bloomberg) — The key to decarbonizing heavy industry, John O’Donnell says, could be hot bricks.
His startup, Rondo Energy, makes a “heat battery” that converts renewable electricity into the high temperatures many industrial processes require. Clay bricks inside the battery are superheated using the same kind of electric heating elements found in toasters and hair driers. Air drawn over the bricks reaches temperatures above 1,000C (1,832F). That air can be used on its own in a factory or run through a steam generator.
Rondo on Monday will unveil the battery’s first commercial deployment, supplying steam to an ethanol plant in California’s Central Valley. Although Rondo and Calgren Renewable Fuels aren’t disclosing contract details, O’Donnell, the startup’s chief executive officer, says the system will provide steam at a lower cost than the plant pays to run gas-fired burners.
The type of brick within the heat battery has been used in steel mills for decades. And the simplicity of the key components of Rondo’s battery means the technology can scale quickly, giving industries such as steel and cement manufacturers a cleaner way to run their factories.
“If you want to get to scale fast, it had better be boring — you’d better not have material science to prove,” O’Donnell said. “We’ve combined stuff the world knows how to make at scale.”
The heat battery is designed to solve two problems at once. It can heat up its bricks in the middle of the day when, in places such as California, so much solar power floods the grid that much of it can’t be used. The battery can then supply heat for hours to come, even after solar production starts fading in the afternoon. If widely deployed, the battery could soak up excess renewable power, while decarbonizing factories that can’t easily run on electricity alone.
“Those two problems turn out to be solutions to each other,” said O’Donnell, a veteran of such clean-tech startups as GlassPoint Solar and Ausra. While the heat battery at the Calgren plant will use power from the electric grid, Rondo is developing projects that will be directly tied to solar and wind generation, he said.
Cutting industrial carbon emissions has been one of the trickiest elements of the energy transition. For heat-dependent industries, hydrogen has emerged as one of the few options, since it can be produced and burned as a fuel without greenhouse gases. But even as governments worldwide push to ramp up hydrogen production and use, a hydrogen-based economy remains years away and will likely require many facilities to retool their equipment. Rondo’s heat battery, O’Donnell said, is easier to add to an existing plant. Although the Calgren project will only supply a fraction of the ethanol plant’s steam, larger versions of the battery could provide all the heat needed for similar facilities.
“We’re looking forward to this unit’s proving itself, because we see the Rondo Heat Battery as a potential ‘perfect fit’ solution for us — a low-cost source of zero-carbon heat for our facilities that can extend our reach toward the lowest-carbon, highest-value biofuels produced anywhere,” said Lyle Schlyer, president of Calgren Renewable Fuels, in a release.
Rondo, based in the San Francisco Bay area, has raised $25 million in Series A funding. Backers include Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Energy Impact Partners, Siam Cement Group and Titan Cement Group.
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