franckl

Please consider a use case where an industrial user install a thermal storage like this one https://www.kyotogroup.no/technology

They may need CO2 free process heat at 400 ℉, and use a thermal storage at 800 or 1000℉.

Our heat engine can pump more heat than resistive heating (heat pump mode) during charge. During discharge, it can convert heat to electricity from 1000F to 400F, and use that electricity to power a heat pump (and produce more heat). We can "magnify" the storage both ways.

We don't need to go to 1000F soon, there are so many applications we can decarbonize along the way. We could lower the temperature and do cooling+heating at the same time for example.

The idea is summarized on this picture https://imgur.com/a/f5T1NYi and is as follow: - solar/wind energy would be converted to heat using our engine and stored into a thermal storage unit (molten salts or sand). This would provide up to 30-40 hours of energy for day-to-day storage. - all year long, the unused energy is converted on-site to green ammonia (with H2 electrolyzers and a small haber-bosch plant) and stored in liquid form at -30C. The ammonia is then burned via a low NOx external burner, something other ammonia engines/turbines can't do well yet without expensive filters, and the combustion heat is turned to electricity with our engine.

This form of storage is much cheaper than storing hydrogen above ground. It competes with H2 storage in under-ground salt caverns without the geographical limitation. The efficiency is far from exceptional, but it is CO2 free and is only used as a "joker" a few days per year.

The whole system is a functional replacement for a natural gas fired power plant.

A company like Form Energy started in 2017, raised hundreds of millions and I think their first pilot is coming next year. Cash is key but not always the issue, I am glad they are helping storage companies with initiatives like the Long Duration Energy Storage group and all their lobbying efforts

- we had to build our own physics algorithm for very specific problems, and ended up selling the software we use internally to DENSO (a large japanese company) which funded the development. See https://tanatloc.com

- tackling a market that doesnt exist yet with a seasonal energy storage solution (a change of engine architecture allowed us to use the same engine but for industrial heat pumps, an existing market much easier to tackle)

- finding the right industrial space,

and so on :)

The COP gets lower as the temperature difference increases as you can expect.