November 18, 2008 Need more power? Try recycling what you’ve already used
By CHRIS MORRISON VentureBeat.com http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2008/11/18/18venturebeat-need-more-power-try-recycling-what-youve-al-100571.html?pagewanted=print Another significant funding for the energy conservation crowd has been announced this morning, with ReGen Power Systems getting $5 million for an engine that can convert waste industrial heat into power. That may sound a bit boring, but the investment and technology are a harbinger of big changes to come. Everyone has experienced waste heat from electricity-driven machines — take your common electrical oven for example. The oven exists to cook things, whether atop its burners or inside. Either way it does it, the majority of the heat goes not to the food, but to the air and environment around the oven. Unless you need a warm kitchen, most of the electricity you just used was wasted. Scale that up a few hundred times, and you’ve got a typical industrial process, along with its massive heat losses. Cooling towers exist just to get rid of all the excess. Of course, engineers have been aware for decades that they could turn that heat back into electricity if they liked, but the process never seemed to be worth it, at least in the United States — in Europe, with higher energy prices and a longer conservation tradition, some big plants do install waste heat recyclers. But with prices set to rise, and worries over global warming, most industries are changing their minds. That’s providing openings for startups. Recycled Energy Development (RED) is one of the more developed companies, has worked on over $2 billion worth of projects according to its webpage, while just two days ago newcomer ElectraTherm reportedly raised $2.6 million in a first funding. ReGen, also, is a newcomer; this funding is its first, and the company is still working on its designs. The company has a prototype 10 kilowatt engine that it will use to test out the concept, with a larger 500kW engine yet to come. That’s about 10 times the size of ElectraTherm’s first production unit, but that’s one of the encouraging things about the influx of new ventures; the heat recyclers they’re building aren’t just for the largest, hottest smokestacks, but will instead address nearly all industries. Ultimately, that could save gigawatts of energy, and generate billions of dollars in revenue yearly. The $5 million funding was led by 21Ventures and the Quercus Trust. ReGen is based in New Salem, Mass. -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
