From firebricks to ice batteries, ancient technologies are being reimagined to help heavy industry and building owners cut emissions and save money.
Easily sourced and inexpensive, clay bricks have been used for millennia to retain heat in ovens—and to warm the foot of cold beds. Now, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spin-off Electrified Thermal Solutions is using what it calls a “unique, low-cost doping of firebrick materials” to create Joule Hive—an electrically conductive brick battery system that can store heat for hours and discharge it by heating air or gas up to 1800°C, reports MIT News. The system is “hot enough to power the most demanding industrial applications.”
Achieving such high temperatures marks a breakthrough in electric heating, allowing the world’s hardest-to-decarbonize sectors to integrate renewable energy for the first time, MIT writes. “It also unlocks a new, low-cost model for using electricity when it’s at its cheapest and cleanest.”
The firebrick system is designed for affordability, its brick arrays housed in insulated, off-the-shelf metal boxes. The bricks themselves are “98% similar to existing firebricks” and produced by the same processes, which means existing manufacturers can make them inexpensively.
Inventor and MIT alumni Daniel Stack said the bricks were engineered from the beginning to be “rapidly scalable and rapidly producible within existing supply chains and manufacturing processes.”
Electric Thermal is engaging with hundreds of clients in the industrial sector, including steel, glass, chemical, and pulp and paper companies. It hopes to have a megawatt-scale commercial version of Joule Hive operational by July 2025.
At the opposite end of the thermometer, thousands of big buildings across the United States are using ice batteries to keep cool, with owners also plugging into savings from reducing reliance on fossil fuel-driven air conditioning, reports The Washington Post.
Another example of ancient-meets-cutting edge thermal energy storage, these battery systems freeze water when electricity rates are low—typically at night—and discharge cooling energy during the day, minimizing the need for costly, polluting traditional air conditioners.
“By shifting their energy use to cheaper times of day, the biggest buildings can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on their power bills,” writes the Post. Ice batteries also ease strain on the grid during times of peak usage, which is when utilities switch on notoriously dirty and inefficient peaker plants, often fired by natural gas.
The technology has mostly been confined to big buildings like office towers and hospitals, which have central cooling systems and large spaces to house the required volume of ice.
But ice batteries for smaller spaces may be in the offing. Israel-based Nostromo Energy struck a conditional US$306-million loan deal with the Joe Biden administration last December to install its skinny “Ice Brick” battery systems in 193 buildings in California and other states, writes the Post. However, Canary Media identified Nostromo’s project as one of 53 under threat from the new Donald Trump administration.
California-based Ice Energy has already installed thousands of its “Ice Bear” batteries in one-story commercial spaces across the U.S. and hopes to offer its petite “Ice Cub” model to homeowners later this year.
