A new California-based startup company has a plan to help decarbonize and electrify one of the biggest issues in industrial development.
According to Canary Media, Calectra may have come up with a solution to the problem of industrialized heat by using superheated bricks.
Lower-temperature industrial heating — for activities like cooking or some chemical work — has seen a big push toward electrification and going green. However, electrifying processes that require higher temperatures, such as glass-making or smelting metals like iron and aluminum, has been a much tougher task.
Calectra's solution to the problem is to electrify and superheat special bricks by directly electrifying them, generating both light and heat. The hot air generated around the superheated bricks would then be fed into industrial processes, allowing them to heat what needs heating.
Getting the air to the temperature required for those tasks is incredibly energy-intensive, and even the level of electricity required would be cost-prohibitive for many manufacturers without the use of dirty fuels like natural gas or coal, Canary Media reported.
"Industrial heat accounts for one-quarter of the global energy consumption and is a massive, $450 billion market," Juha Lindfors, a partner at Lifeline Ventures, said in a statement on its funding of Calectra, "Decarbonizing industrial heat presents a huge opportunity."
Calectra's technology is still in the very early stages of development; the company hopes to expand its team to begin testing ideal materials for its processes and scale up its testing to make sure the process works at a level needed for industrial production.
But if they're successful, the use of electrified bricks could go a long way toward eliminating one of the largest planet-warming gas producers.
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"We're laser-focused on building a solution for high-temperature heat at low cost and zero carbon," Calectra's co-founder Pauliina Meskanen said, per Canary Media. "It's risky, but it's worth giving it a shot for the sake of the climate."
Superheated materials are also under investigation as a way to store energy.
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