Photo Caption: A block of fired bricks made in Nepal – a block of refractory ceramic material used in lining furnaces, combustion chambers and chimneys, built primarily to withstand high temperatures, but also typically have low thermal conductivity for greater energy efficiency. But can refractory bricks be used to both store and create heat?
The energy world faces the almost impossible task of abandoning fossil fuels. This requires thinking outside the box, something revolutionary brimming with energy that takes us away from the slow fossil fuels that emit too much CO2 into the atmosphere and rapidly overheat the planet. The CO2/global warming relationship, joined at the hip, must come to an end, or it will self-destruct everything in sight.
In the face of ultra-fast technological advances, oil and gas production is old, dirty and slow, and captures incredible sums of money for a few by extracting the remains of dead organisms found deep underground, that is, oil. In a strange and twisted way, this is biological money stolen from Earth. but that is too deep a topic for now.
Instead, what if zero-CO2 thermal bricks could convert electricity at 1,800°C (3,275°F) with enough power to melt steel, without the need for fossil fuels? And not only create heat for heavy industry, but also store it for days when the sun doesn’t shine. It sounds too good to be true. It is a case that breaks that rule.
Meet Electrified Thermal Solutions (“ETS”), an MIT spin-off company that designed Joule Hive, an elevator-sized thermal battery featured in a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article: Can Electrically Conductive Bricks replace fossil fuels? d/d May 27, 2024. (originally from Inside Climate News)
Even more miraculous, the ETS has perfected the technologically marvelous brick and has contracted with a major industrial brick manufacturer, using the patented ETS formula, to bring to market orders ranging from two tons of bricks to 2,000 tons of bricks, or more. . In fact, ETS has recently received its first order for several tons of thermal bricks, without CO2 included.
A brick that creates heat on an industrial scale
The ETS brick is a brilliant response to the energy transition to convert electricity into high temperature heat that is today made with coal and natural gas to power heavy industry. Bring in the bricks, remove the coal, turn off the natural gas. Brick technology is here to eliminate the biggest supporters of global warming, i.e. oil, gas and coal.
Significantly, and this is big: With the Joule Hive thermal battery, for the first time electricity can be used to drive a gas turbine. Interpretation: The world’s 1.8 Terawatts of existing natural gas plants could be converted into grid-scale batteries to balance intermittent renewable generation. ETS aims to transform natural gas plants into decarbonized batteries to make a grid of the future with zero carbon emissions possible. Here’s the gist: One trillion watts (one Terawatt) is equivalent to all the electricity in all the power plants in the US.
The origin of thermal bricks came from Dan Stack and Joey Kabel, when Dan Stack at MIT wondered aloud if refractory bricks, like those used in residential fireplaces, could serve to both store heat and create it. Thereafter, by altering the metal oxides within the brick creation, wonderful things happen: (1) they conduct electricity (2) they generate heat (3) they store heat. It’s extraordinary and marketable, and should become a hot new product, assuming it succeeds in the commercial market with a couple of high-profile, adventurous first customers.
According to Stack, “there are no exotic metals here, nothing that burns.”
Thanks to the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the US Department of Energy awarded ETS a $5 million grant to help build the first commercial-scale demonstration at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio : “The project will demonstrate how the thermal battery could provide high-temperature heat for a number of industrial processes, including cement manufacturing, which currently relies primarily on burning coal for heat.” (Bulletin)
«Massimo Toso, president and CEO of Buzzi Unicem USA, one of the largest cement producers in the United States and ETS’ industrial partner on the Department of Energy grant, praised the company’s thermal battery: “The Joule Hive thermal battery of ETS is the first industrial heat decarbonization solution that we have identified that could allow us to cost-effectively eliminate the use of fossil fuels in our heating processes”, Ibid.
This is a big step toward decarbonizing heavy industry, which accounts for about a quarter (1/4) of direct greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Thermal batteries (bricks) powered by Renewable energy could reduce industry emissions by half. This is a huge step in the right direction and a pioneer for faster decarbonisation of the economy. In fact, if it is as successful as it seems, it is a giant step towards abandoning fossil fuels.
Another shrewd decision by the Biden administration was to award $35 million to Ashland, a specialty chemicals manufacturer in Wilmington, Delaware, with a Department of Energy matching grant for the commercial deployment of ETS thermal batteries to be installed in the Ashland’s ISP Chemicals plant in Calvert City, Kentucky, where large volumes of high-temperature steam are needed to run its operations.
«The project would replace the natural gas boilers at the Calvert City plant with ETS thermal batteries. The air blown through the Joule Hive batteries would transfer heat from the flame to the boilers to generate steam. The project would reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with steam generation at the plant by nearly 70%, according to the Department of Energy,” Ibid. Ashland is currently evaluating the proposal.
This highlights the importance and key role of policy makers focusing on global warming mitigation; It has never been so important. Global warming is not a matter to be taken as a joke. It is already killing people and decimating life-giving ecosystems, raising ocean levels and upending the global weather system with unprecedented levels of ferocity, the world’s largest and fiercest wildfires, while the heat scorching heat now covers the planet like never before: When it’s hot, it’s never been so hot!
A fair question is whether Electrified Thermal Solutions would have been funded under the description of the following proposal for a new 2025 federal administration: Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for MAGA Republicans going forward: “The proposals of the plan include gutting existing climate programs and increasing dependence on fossil fuels. “It emphatically repudiates efforts to decarbonize the economy and is a complete rollback of the progress made on climate policy in recent years.”
(Source: Project 2025 tells us what a second Trump term could mean for climate policy. It Isn’t Pretty, WBUR nonprofit news org, March 27, 2024.)
The light at the end of the tunnel just blinked.
