California-based Rondo has plans to decarbonize cement production and much more. 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.
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.
Converting and storing excess renewable energy!
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.
Using heat to store energy isn’t new. Concentrated solar power plants, which reflect sunlight at a central tower to collect energy, often use “molten salts” to store that energy for several hours.
Rondo claims it can create high heat and store it with near 98 percent efficiency using common insulation material. O’Donnell said the heat can be delivered continuously to cement kilns.
Competition
One competitor for Rondo’s technology is green hydrogen, which is also generated from renewable energy and can also be stored. But the infrastructure for green hydrogen does not exist yet, and the electrolyzers needed to produce the hydrogen are expensive. Some industry observers believe wide-scale deployment of clean hydrogen is still years away.
Some technologies in overlapping markets could also be seen as potential Rondo competitors. Energy Nest and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy both have thermal storage options, though not necessarily reaching the same high temperatures as Rondo claims its process can and not necessarily derived from 100 percent clean energy. The Department of Energy says it is in late-stage testing of a prototype that can store high heat that it calls Enduring, but the intention is to turn that heat back into electricity, not use it as heat.
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