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Getting rid of fossil fuels is relatively simple for some things. Housing? Replace furnaces with heat pumps. Cars and light trucks? Eliminate internal combustion from batteries and electric motors. However, for many industries such as cement, steel industry, etc., it is difficult to replace heating energy with fossil fuels.
But Dan Stack believes bricks have an impact.
Stack has been working for a decade to provide the humble brick with the ability to convert electricity into heat and store it for hours on end. By changing the refractory bricks already used in glassmaking and other industries, he and his colleagues were able to achieve this Electrified thermal solutionswhere he is co-founder and CEO, was able to turn them into electrical conductors that can carry current and turn it into intense heat simply by stacking them on top of each other.
The company currently has an elevator-sized demonstration, and is using data from that to prepare for a larger, commercial-scale unit.
“We’ve logged thousands of hours now,” Stack told TechCrunch. He said ETS bricks should be able to provide heat for years because they rely on existing fire bricks. “These bricks have been accustomed to seeing temperatures above 1,700 degrees Celsius for decades.”
The company plans to run the Joule Hive’s heat batteries continuously — “Most of the industry wants heat 24/7/365,” Stack said — but to be cost-competitive with natural gas, its customers will have to charge the bricks when they plug in electricity. Prices are low, as is the case when there is a surplus of wind or solar energy.
“Being able to absorb most of your energy within a few hours is valuable,” he said, allowing businesses to take advantage not only of lower prices, but also of incentives from grid operators to be flexible about when they use electricity.
In some areas where renewables are available and natural gas is expensive, “we can provide a return on investment for these systems compared to the natural gas customers burn today,” he said. “We are seeing more and more signs that we can compete head-to-head with fossil fuels in more areas.”
ETS first targets industries that need large amounts of heat, but not the hottest temperatures. Currently, this includes drying, steam generation, and cement calcination. Over time, Stack said the company should be able to reach a temperature of 1,800 degrees Celsius, making the bricks usable in other industries such as steelmaking. Eventually, the heat generated by the bricks may be able to help power turbines in natural gas power plants, displacing fossil fuels.
Stack said the startup plans to begin offering it on a commercial scale in mid-2025. To achieve this milestone, ETS has raised $19 million in what the company calls a pre-Series A, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The round included investments from Clean Energy Ventures, Clean Energy Venture Group, EDP Ventures, GVP Climate, Holcim Maqer Ventures, Mass Ventures, Starlight Ventures, TechEnergy Ventures, Topras Ventures, and Vale Ventures.
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