This startup wants to use cheap surplus clean energy to make high-temperature industrial heat
A Bay Area startup says it has a new solution for one of the most stubborn problems in the transition to clean energy: replacing the fossil fuels burned for high-temperature cement production with a climate-friendly alternative.
Rondo Energy has constructed and carried out a pilot project and is now building a plant at a customer’s site. The idea is to demonstrate that excess renewable electricity can be converted into round-the-clock heat at temperatures in the thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.
A success in this sector could have ripple effects that spread throughout the building industry. Architects and engineers are grappling with the greenhouse gas emissions stemming from the production of cement, which is a key ingredient in concrete, the most commonly used building material on earth.
Cement is responsible for about 7 to 8 percent of all global carbon dioxide emissions. Between about a third and a half of those emissions come from the coal and natural gas burned in the kilns that make cement.
Rondo wants to replace that fossil heat — typically in the range of 1,800 to 2,700 degrees F, up to 24 hours per day — with electric resistance heating produced with excess renewable power.
“This is a fundamentally new tool in the decarbonization toolbox,” said Rondo Energy CEO John O’Donnell. “The high temperature is a problem there has not been a solution for.”
In fact, this new approach wouldn’t have been possible even just a few years ago.
The rise of abundant renewable electricity in some parts of the world has led to overproduction during certain periods of the day, as with solar power in California. That overabundance drives down power prices at certain hours, and at some points even forces solar and wind power production to be halted because there isn’t enough demand for it.
Rondo takes excess renewable energy and converts it to high-temperature heat via electrical resistance, the same technology used by a traditional electric stove or a toaster. The high heat is then stored in a rock or mineral material that is insulated so the heat stays in.
Bob Epstein, co-founder of cleantech entrepreneur group E2 and a member of Project 2030, a group focused on decarbonization in California, has been watching O’Donnell’s progress with Rondo. “He takes eight hours of electricity and turns it into 24 hours of heat. And the eight hours of electricity don’t have to [occur] all at one time,” Epstein said.
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