A startup company might have just changed the energy sector forever - and could be slashing pollution in half.
Their genius invention could be the future for many companies after they developed a ‘groundbreaking’ thermal battery hotter than boiling steel.
The battery is made up of thermal bricks that are stacked to produce a more sustainable heat to power heavy industry.
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This means that industries such as steel, cement, glass, chemicals, and food manufacturing could be powered by the batteries which provide low-cost electrified heat.
It's been nearly a decade in the making, as a team at MIT labs have been engineering the technology behind the product.
They figured out how use firebricks, which are blocks of ceramic material that are used in industrial furnaces and kilns and home fireplaces, to conduct electricity.
That electricity is converted into heat which can reach temperatures near a blistering 3,275 degrees Fahrenheit and is much hotter than the melting point of steel at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
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The startup is Electrified Thermal Solutions which is made up of a team of engineers, scientists, and bricklayers.
Their new product is called the Joule Hive which is an insulated metal container that acts as a thermal battery. It will store heat from the bricks for days at a time.
Talking to Inside Climate News, Daniel Stack, the CEO and co-founder of the company, said: “If you are running an industrial plant where you’re making cement or steel or glass or ceramics or chemicals or even food or beverage products, you burn a lot of fossil fuels.
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“Our mission is to decarbonize industry with electrified heat.”
The industrial sector produces nearly a quarter of pollution in the US, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, resulting in rising temperatures and more extreme weather.
The Joule Hive could be a more sustainable heat source for the industry, meaning that the businesses would no longer be a factor in climate change.
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Speaking to ICN. Charles Forsberg, MIT nuclear engineering research scientist and an advisor to Electrified Thermal Solutions, said: “I have no doubt that this is going to go commercial. I’m 77, it’s just sort of an intuitive feel of 50 years in the game.”
It’s looking like there could be a brighter future for the startup, and for the planet.
After years of placing small orders for test batches, the business recently made its first multi-tonne order of bricks.
Stack added: “Now, if you want two tonnes, [or, if] you want 2,000 tonnes, the manufacturer is ready to do that for us. We’re off to the races.”