ElectraTherm, which has developed a relatively small machine for making electricity from waste heat, has raised $2.6 million and plans a follow-on round next year.
The Carson City, Nev.-based company's ElectraTherm Green Machine is designed to squeeze power from the heat thrown off at industrial facilities like factories, saw mills, or oil and gas operations.
A 50-kilowatt generator that runs on industrial waste heat.
(Credit: ElectraTherm)The company intends to make units that range in size from 30 kilowatts to 500 kilowatts, enough to offset electricity use at an industrial facility. A 50 kilowatt unit can generate roughly what 40 U.S. homes consume.
The money from the $2.6 million Series A was from Michigan investor Interlaken and angel investors, said William Olsen, ElectraTherm's vice president of business development. He said the company intends to raise more money--in the range of $5 million to $8 million--early next year to expand manufacturing.
The company has made only a handful of units so far, including one installed at Southern Methodist University. But Olsen said the company is in discussions with utilities, oil and gas companies, and other industrial firms looking for energy-efficiency technologies.
"There's waste heat everywhere," he said. "We've been able to convince (potential customers) that the technology works. At this stage, it's just helping them deploy it."
The generator uses an organic Rankine cycle to convert heat into electrical energy. It channels heat to a refrigerant that is converted to a gas by the heat. The vapor pressure caused from that reaction turns a mechanism that is connected to a generator that makes electricity.
ElectraTherma certainly isn't the only company that has equipment to turn industrial waste heat into electricity. But its product design allows it to operate at relatively small scale and low temperatures, as low as 200 degrees, Olsen said.
When fossil fuels are burned, about two thirds of the energy content is wasted. The net effect of a heat-capturing machine is to squeeze another ten percent of energy from those fuels, Olsen said.
The cost for a 50-kilowatt system is $128,000. Depending on the cost of electricity, the payback is typically under three years, according to the company.
Thermoelectricity--the practice of drawing electricity from heat--is getting a real-life work-out.
ElectraTherm on Thursday said that it has installed a 50-kilowatt machine that uses industrial waste heat as its "fuel."
A 50 kilowatt 'green machine' that runs on waste heat.
(Credit: ElectraTherm)The company says that the ElectraTherm Green Machine, installed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, will recoup its purchase cost in three to four years with electricity costing three or four cents per kilowatt-hour during that time.
The machine uses an organic Rankine cycle to heat liquids which are turned into a vapor that turns a turbine to make electricity.
The thermoelectric effect has been known since the early 19th century. But the idea of making electricity from heat appears to be getting more attention.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers earlier this year funded an spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technolocy called GMZ Energy.
ElectraTherm says that its unit doesn't require any specialized electronics and is relatively easy to maintain. The basic technology can be scaled up to produce up to 500 kilowatts.
For comparison, a typical home solar installation can generate between two and four kilowatts, while Google's solar array at its corporate headquarters--considered the largest in the U.S.--is 1.6 megawatts.
Preston Koerner in the Jetson Green green-building blog said the ElectraTherm machine demonstrates that heat-to-electricity can be done at a relatively small scale. It generates about enough electricity for about 40 homes, he added.
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