Fast Company
Summary
A new type of tech designed to tackle one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions works a little like a toaster—if your toaster could reach more than 3,200 degrees Fahrenheit and heated up giant blocks instead of bread.
The device, called a thermal battery, is made by the startup, Antora Energy, which launched a pilot this summer to test the design. The startup wants to transform the hard-to-decarbonize industrial sector without increasing costs. A third of the energy used in the U.S. goes to heat in factories, from the natural gas that runs boilers in breweries to coal used in furnaces making steel.
At a site in California’s Central Valley, an electric utility is now testing the battery at a combined heat and power plant. The pilot has proven that the bricks can reach temperatures above 1,800 degrees Celsius, or 3,200 degrees Fahrenheit. That temperature “opens up pretty much every industrial process,” Ponec says. “About 99% of industrial heat is applicable with a system that goes that high.”
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