A new and innovative technology that uses CO2 as a means of energy storage can be built using ready-made equipment and launched early next year.

Long-term energy storage is difficult, and many battery technologies have focused on “how fast we can charge these batteries so I can drive my electric car for a few hundred miles.” This problem is fundamentally different from trying to capture the sun for 12 hours, before releasing energy for the next 12 hours while the moon is walking lazily against the night sky.

The company told us that the optimal charge / discharge cycle of a CO2 battery varies from four to 24 hours, making it perfect for day-to-day cycling. He points out that this is a fast-growing market segment that does not make good use of existing battery technologies. In particular, it is hoped to charge the carbon dioxide battery during the day, when there is excess energy produced by the sun, before discharging in the evening and at night, when the demand for electricity from solar energy can be higher. Be. Because, well, I hate to feel the need to spell on you – but not on a sunny night.

The company claims that it is made using commodity components whose CO2 batteries achieve 75 to 80 percent return efficiency. But perhaps more interestingly, the battery life is estimated at about 25 years. If you look at other energy storage solutions, you will notice that most other solutions have a significantly reduced service life of up to a decade. The company predicts that, given the total cost of its product life cycle, energy storage costs will be about half the cost of storage with lithium-ion batteries of the same size.

The technology is very clean – the company uses CO2 in a closed loop cycle where it converts from gas to liquid and back to gas. The company’s name derives from the “dome” component of the solution – an atmospheric atmospheric gas retainer filled with CO2 in its gaseous form.

When charged, the system draws power from the mains, which drives a compressor that draws CO2 from the dome, compresses it and generates heat. Heat is stored in a thermal energy storage device. The CO2 is then liquefied under pressure and stored in liquid CO2 tanks at ambient temperature to complete the charge cycle. During discharge, the cycle is reversed by evaporating liquid CO2, recovering heat from the thermal energy storage system, and spreading hot CO2 to a turbine, which drives a generator. Electricity is returned to the grid, and CO2 re-inflates the dome into the atmosphere without emitting greenhouse gases, preparing it for the next charge cycle. The storage capacity of this system is up to 200 MWh.

The round was led by deep-tech company VC 360 Capital, while a number of other investors completed the round, including the Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital Program, part of Barclays’s influential investment approach, and several Geneva-based families. office Novum Capital Partners and Third Derivative, a global climate technology accelerator founded by RMI and New Energy Nexus.

Source : energy-storage _ techcrunch