The Department of Energy (DOE) and United States National Lab have awarded EarthEn $750,000 in funding through the Innovations Crossroads program to advance the commercialization of its long-duration energy storage solution utilizing supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) technology.
EarthEn’s technology is a hybrid thermos-mechanical form of energy storage that uses sCO2 to provide short and long-duration energy storage. Research and development will take place at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Knoxville, Tennessee campus.
According to the DOE, sCO2-based power cycles operate similarly to turbine cycles, but they utilize CO2 as the working fluid. This allows the cycles to operate above the critical point of CO2 so the CO2 undergoes drastic density changes over small ranges of temperature and pressure. This effectively increases the heat-to-electricity conversion efficiency and simplifies operations when compared to existing steam-based power cycles.
"We are honored to be selected to participate in the prestigious Innovation Crossroads. The funding and support will propel our efforts to further develop and commercialize our sCO2-based energy storage technology" said EarthEn CEO Manas Pathak.
