There are 56 reactors in France, they never went offline at the same time. It happened that half went offline but no more than that
321 karma · joined March 24, 2017
- our team was in full lockdown in France for a while and we could not prototype as easily
- in 2021 we were still focused on seasonal energy storage, a very capital intensive endeavour, a market not ready and a very risky project.
- the rules for crowdfunding changed in 2021 and the use of SPV (special purpose vehicles) made it possible to raise big + have one line on the cap table.
We had to derisk the project further to be able to attract VC funding (patent, prototype, LOIs, financial model, etc.) and we ultimately followed the advice from another YC founder and friend who went the crowdfunding route with success. A lot of crowdfunding projects look like outright scams and probably are... but I feel that the SEC did a good job protecting the public. You cannot invest more than a certain amount if you are not accredited for example. Things are certainly not perfect, and getting better year after year.
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.
You are correct. In our case, we can go from ambient air to the desired process temperature, but the coefficient of performance will be much better if we have access to a waste heat source (the higher temperature the better).
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
- hard to raise funds for large deeptech projects (thank you YC and Wefunder for unlocking that one!)
- a corrosion issue in 2019 that nearly killed us (we found a way around it after months of brainstorming and completely got rid of corrosion issues)
- 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.
It is a big deal because factories have to rely on polluting natural gas to produce their process heat.
We estimate that it represents 3% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions and a $10B+ annual market opportunity.
We are currently building a 5kW prototype at 480℉/250C to cook french fries for McCain (world's largest manufacturer of frozen potato products), our industrial partner for the first pilot.
If you would like to support our decarbonization efforts, feel free to email us on contact@airthium.com or to invest in our crowdfunding! https://wefunder.com/airthium
It is more than a heat pump, it is a new Stirling engine architecture, so it can run in reverse (heat to electricity) with an exceptional efficiency
We make a breakthrough heat engine to decarbonize industrial heat and electricity production.
Part of that effort includes a lot of numerical simulations with custom made physics models based on FreeFEM, a powerful open source PDE solver.
Tanatloc is a graphical interface for FreeFEM. It allows mechanical engineers and researchers to solve problems locally or in the cloud.
We are working on a code editor so that everyone will be able to submit their own physics models. Our goal is to build the largest open source FEA models database!
It's time to democratize access to numerical simulation. We can't wait to see what startups and inventors will be able to do with Tanatloc :)
Our proprietary electric heat engine (=a heat pump) can generate heat up to 1000℉, and we will use it to replace industrial gas boilers and dryers with a CO2 free solution. We are in discussions with multiple potential customers for this product.
The development of the ammonia burner is done in parallel as it will be useful in a few years, when we will be ready to deploy the seasonal energy storage system.
A few companies like Form Energy are starting to deploy their first pilots at scale, let's hope they succeed!
Check us out! https://airthium.com