Our society needs to reduce the environmental impact of its economy. To do this, we need to produce less. One way of doing this is to extend the life of products, to make the economy more “circular”, for example by encouraging the second-hand goods market.

Bluedigo is part of this trend, offering second-hand office furniture. Co-founder Timothée Jochum agreed to answer a few of our questions.

What environmental issues does Bluedigo address?

In France, 250,000 tonnes of office furniture are thrown away every year. Less than 1% of this furniture is reused, around 15% is destroyed for recycling and 85% ends up in landfill or incineration. In addition, an employee generates between 120 and 140 kg of waste every year.

To support companies in their ecological transition, Bluedigo offers 100% eco-responsible used office furniture and office supplies. We salvage furniture from company moves and then resell it to other companies (startups, SMEs, coworking spaces, etc.). Bluedigo helps to reduce the amount of furniture waste generated by companies, and contributes to the development of the circular economy.

What does Bluedigo offer?

Bluedigo’s ambition is to help companies create positive-impact workspaces by offering second-hand office furniture and eco-responsible office supplies. On our e-commerce site, we offer all types of second-hand furniture: desks, chairs, storage units, relaxation areas… furniture that’s less expensive than new and eco-responsible!

When it comes to office supplies, 70% of our catalog is made in France, and 100% of our stationery is recycled paper. We also offer a range of water bottles, lunchboxes and mugs to get rid of plastic in the office (cups, plastic packaging, etc.).

What added value does Bluedigo offer its customers?

The second-hand office furniture we offer is inexpensive, costing on average 50% less than new furniture. Using second-hand furniture is also the most eco-responsible practice, as it avoids the pollution associated with the production of new furniture (CO2 emissions, use of raw materials….). Last but not least, our furniture is delivered pre-assembled, which is a real time-saver for small businesses! We also offer our customers customizable eco-responsible welcome-packs (water bottles, lunchboxes, mugs, etc.).

Have you identified any competitors? If so, what competitive advantages set you apart?

We have a few competitors in the used office furniture sector, notably brokers who aren’t yet very digitalized. We offer a designer e-commerce site where you can make all your office furniture purchases online. We’ve also set ourselves apart by offering a complementary range of eco-responsible office supplies, so you can be even greener in the office!

What’s currently preventing you from completely filling your market?

We’re a young startup created in July 2019. We’re mainly active in the Ile-de-France region, but we’d like to expand more in the regions to better support companies locally.

Boston Metal is an MIT spin-off working to decarbonize steel production through an innovative process: electrolysis of metal to reduce (= deoxidize) iron ore. This process consumes much less energy than its alternative, the use of hydrogen, and could even compete with the current dominant, highly polluting process using coke in blast furnaces.

Reduction of iron oxide by electrolysis

The current polluting solution: blast furnaces

To produce iron and then steel, the ore must first be deoxidized. This is because the ore is mainly composed of iron oxide. To achieve this, an extremely polluting process is used: the ore is placed on a bed of coke (solid carbon) heated to very high temperatures (2100°C). The carbon is then removed by oxidation, releasing even more CO2. In all, steel production accounts for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is the BF-BOF(Blast Furnace – Basic Oxygen Furnace) process.

Hydrogen to decarbonize steel?

One solution is to use hydrogen to reduce the ore: exposed to hydrogen, the oxygen in the ore is extracted without the ore having to melt. However, hydrogen is expensive to produce in a low-carbon environment, and the efficiency of the process is not guaranteed (is all the hydrogen consumed?). This is all the more problematic as H2 has a negative effect on the atmosphere: it delays the degradation of methane into CO2, the former being a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent. This is the DR-EAF(Direct Reduction – Electric Arc Furnace) process.

The Boston Metal solution

Boston Metal proposes directelectrolysis of molten iron ore(Melted oxide electrolysis, MOE), to generate the following reaction: “Fe2O3 e- => Fe O2″. The result is directly molten iron, with no need for an electric arc furnace. The catalyst

The process is so revolutionary that it may even prove more profitable than the current dominant solution. Indeed, blast furnaces are gigantic installations representing investments running into billions of euros. The Boston Metal solution, on the other hand, would be modular, capable of operating on a small scale. In particular, it would bring the installations closer to the mines. The process would be 35% less expensive than BF-BOF.

The success of this technology, which electrifies steel production, depends on the development of low-carbon electricity. Combined with the development of small modular reactors integrating nuclear power generation, heat and power, and industrial processes could accentuate this difference and make BF-BOF completely obsolete.

Extraction of low-concentration, non-value-added metals

Rocks extracted by the mining industry may contain compounds that are too low in concentration to be mined. These remnants, currently considered as waste, can be recovered using the process developed by Boston Metal. The company began this activity in Brazil in 2022 and markets the extracted metal.

History and progress of Boston Metal

History of Boston Metal’s MOE technology

This technology goes back a long way: as early as the 1980s, MIT researcher Donald R. Sadoway, working on an anode for aluminum production, developed an electrolytic cell to produce MOE. In the early 2010s, Sadoway and MIT colleague Antoine Allanore developed a means of extracting oxygen from the moon for NASA. They developed an electrolysis system to extract oxygen from rock. As you may have guessed, this is the process. Note that, similarly, space research had been a driving force, also to produce oxygen, in the development of alkaline electrolysis in the 50s.

For a long time, the problem was that the anode material was either consumed during the reaction (graphite), or out of reach (iridium for iron, for example). The production of iron posed the challenge of withstanding heat in excess of 1538°C (the melting point of iron) and resisting oxidation and corrosion. They solved these problems by developing chromium anodes. This solution, opening the door to industrialization of the process, was published in 2013 in the journal Nature.

It was also in this year that Boston Metal was born, under the name Boston Electrometallurgical Corporation.(source)

Boston Metal’s development

The company has raised several rounds of financing:

  • Series A, in 2018, $20 million, led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures(BEV), with also Prelude Ventures and The Engine (and OGCI Climate Investments?).
  • Series B, in 2021, $50 or $60 million, with two major mining companies, Vale and BHP(BHP Ventures). Other investors include Energy Impact Partners, Piva Capital and Devonshire Investors. The company grows from 8 to 65 employees.
  • Series C, in 2023, of $120 million, is led by the world’s largest steel company: ArcellorMittal, through its XCarb® Innovation Fund. Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund and SiteGround Capital are also participating.

In 2022, the startup will open a subsidiary in Brazil to produce high-value metals from mining waste. They plan to market the tool itself in 2023.

What if you could save 40% of your electricity consumption without having to change your installation or carry out costly work? That’s the promise of BeeBryte, a SaaS solution optimizing heating-ventilation-air conditioning (HVAC) and refrigeration systems.

BeeBryte agreed to answer our questions to clarify their project:

What environmental issues does BeeBryte address?

Every day, global electricity consumption exceeds 70TWh, with 90% coming from industry and buildings. In all, this percentage also represents a third of energy-relatedCO2 emissions. Among industrial and commercial buildings, heating-ventilation-air-conditioning (HVAC) and refrigeration systems account for the biggest slice of the pie.

At BeeBryte, we’re deploying a solution to optimize this consumption. Our software-as-a-service (SaaS) encompasses data analysis, activity prediction, and optimal control of refrigeration equipment and HVAC systems thanks to artificial intelligence. This technique reduces consumption andCO2 emissions, generating savings of up to 40% on electricity costs.

What is BeeBryte ‘s solution?

Our IoT software gateway solution reduces energy bills by remotely sending commands to refrigeration and HVAC equipment.

Taking into account weather forecasts, building activity and the price of electricity, our algorithms anticipate the thermal demand of sites to produce cold/hot at the best time, while respecting comfort and the operating range determined by the customer.

Source : www.beebryte.com

What added value do you bring to your customers?

Our customers save up to 40% of their energy costs by reducing their consumption and shifting their consumption to when energy is cheapest. Thanks to our dynamic, automatic control – whose commands are transmitted directly to the equipment via the gateway – the solution enables further optimization of consumption, while freeing up time for the customer’s teams, who can then concentrate on higher value-added activities.

For example, in a refrigerated warehouse near Lyon, we reduced the electricity consumption of the chillers by 98,000MWh per year, representing savings of €78,000. Internationally, we generated the equivalent of €190,000 in annual savings for a logistics customer with warehouses in Singapore. These savings correspond to a reduction of around one thousand tonnes ofCO2 emissions.

The service is adaptable, however, and is not exclusively reserved for warehouses, but makes sense for any industrial or tertiary building with heavy use of HVAC or refrigeration systems.

Have you identified any competitors? If so, what are your competitive advantages?

We have identified a few competitors in the field, but none of them do exactly what BeeBryte does. Overall, we can see that the software approach to energy efficiency – which includes control and is not limited to the supervision/recommendation combo – is not very widespread.

Among those perceived as our competitors are companies offering to reduce consumption by adding or replacing equipment. These companies are in fact partners for BeeBryte, since our solutions complement each other. Those present in the software sphere focus on a particular aspect and prioritize self-consumption, for example, or concentrate exclusively on energy efficiency.

What sets us apart is, first and foremost, the fact that we make maximum use of existing equipment. In most cases, our IoT gateway is the only addition needed to make the solution work, even if it is sometimes accompanied by temperature sensors and electricity meters. Our solution is therefore simple to deploy and non-disruptive to the customer’s business.

In addition, our differentiation lies in the dynamic aspect of equipment control and the anticipation of external factors such as the number of people in the building or the weather. Combined with our patented optimization method, this enables us to accumulate several strategies in addition to energy efficiency, including price arbitrage and peak shaving.

Finally, our business model is based on pure sharing of the savings generated. In other words, no savings generated, no payment to us – it’s as simple as that! So there are no installation costs for our customers, and therefore no financial risk.

What’s currently preventing you from completely filling your market?

Traditionally, energy efficiency solutions on the market involve replacing and upgrading equipment – which is rarely the most sustainable solution if you take into account the environmental cost of materials and the production of this equipment. Our software solution disrupts these habits and changes their vision of this sector.

Our challenge is to convince them that this type of solution is possible and can generate this level of savings, while respecting occupant comfort and operational constraints.

To reassure our partners, we implement maximum transparency by combining a savings calculation method that complies with IPMVP and ASHRAE recommendations, monthly reports, and 24/7 access to an equipment and performance monitoring tool. Added to this is the possibility for the customer to regain control at any time if they so wish.

Ballard Power Systems, a Canadian company, is a major player in the production of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC). It specializes in the production of high-power fuel cells for heavy mobility applications (buses, trains, ships, etc.).

History of Ballard Power Systems

Ballard Power Systems was founded in 1979 by Geoffrey Ballard, Keith Prater and Paul Howard to design high-capacity lithium batteries. However, in 1983 they shifted their focus to the development of proton exchange membrane fuel cells. After the design of a 5kW cell in 1990, things accelerated with a joint venture between Ballard, General Motors and the US Department of Energy in 1991, the development [beginning or end?] of a 90kW cell for hydrogen-powered buses in 1992, followed by a partnership with Daimler-Benz, and anIPO in 1993.

In 1997, the company founded a joint venture with Daimler and Ford , the Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation (AFCC), to develop fuel cells for automobiles. From 1998 onwards, several tests of hydrogen-powered buses powered by Ballard fuel cells began:

  • Three buses in Vancouver and Chicago in 1998.
  • 30 hydrogen-powered buses in ten European cities, plus 3 in Perth (Australia) and 3 in Beijing (China).

In 2008, Ballard sells its AFCC shares to Daimler and Ford, focusing on fuel cell design for heavy-duty mobility.

In 2018, Weichai Power acquired, as part of a strategic cooperation, 19.9% of Ballard Power Systems for $163 million. The two companies also entered into a joint venture 51% owned by Weichai to supply the Chinese market with PACs.(source)

Ballard Power Systems products

Ballard Power Systems develops PEMFC fuel cells for heavy-duty mobility ranging from 30kW to 200kW.

In all, Ballard is said to have produced 850MW of PEMFC.

Ballard Power Systems in practice

When it comes to hydrogen applications, Ballard is undoubtedly one of the names that comes up most often. They equip several hydrogen bus lines: Solaris, Eldorado (California), Van Hool, Wrightbus and New Flyer buses. Other partnerships include one with Siemens and CRRC (China) to develop 200kW PACs for rail transport, and another with ABB to develop a 1MW PEMFC for marine applications(source)

Other hydrogen-related companies we have mentioned include:

  • Hyvia : a joint venture between Renault Group and Plug Power to develop hydrogen-powered heavy-duty vehicles and hydrogen stations.
  • Renault Group: one of the world’s leading carmakers, developing hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles.
  • Genvia : a joint venture between the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) Liten, Schlumberger, Vicat, Vinci Construction and the Occitanie region to develop a reversible high-temperature electrolyzer.

AW Energy is a Finnish company developing a wave power plant based on a submerged panel that moves with the movement of waves near the coast.

AW Energy’s Waveroller

Wave energy is arenewable form ofenergy that converts the kinetic energy of ocean waves into electricity. Devices such as point absorbers, oscillating columns and lapping devices capture wave motion and transform it into mechanical energy. Generators then convert this mechanical energy into electricity. Wave energy offers greater predictability and less intermittency than other renewable energy sources.

AW Energy’s product is a wave energy installation several meters high, known as a “Waveroller”. Partially or fully submerged in water 8 or 20m deep, each device would have a power output of between 350kW and 1MW, and a load factor of between 25 and 50%.

The device would have an integrated energy storage system that would enable it to smooth out the device’s output and respond to strong grid variations (?).

Credit: AW energy
Waveroller
Credit: AW energy

History, progress and financing of AW Energy

AW-Energy is a Finnish company specializing in the development of wave energy technologies, founded in 2002. According to crunchbase, the company has to date raised a Series A round in 2004, for an undisclosed amount, then €15M in 2014, then €10M from the European Investment Bank in 2016. It is a member of the Solar Impulse Foundation.

Here are a few key moments in AW-Energy’s history:

  • 2002: AW-Energy is founded in Finland.
  • 2012: AW-Energy installs a 300 kW WaveRoller demonstrator off the coast of Portugal.
  • 2013 : The WaveRoller demonstration project receives financial support from the European Union under the Horizon 2020 program.
  • 2015 : AW-Energy announces a partnership with Finnish industrial group Wärtsilä to enhance WaveRoller manufacturing and marketing.
  • 2016 : The company obtains a US patent for its WaveRoller technology.
  • 2018 : AW-Energy receives additional funding from the European Union and the Finnish Energy Agency to support the development of WaveRoller technology.

The history of the projects, which date back to 1999, can be found at this link: https://aw-energy.com/projects/ .

Airthium is a greentech – deeptech startup developing three solutions revolving around a Stirling engine, a kind of reversible heat pump:

  • The production of process heat up to 550°C from electricity, at a price that will eventually be competitive with natural gas.
  • A seasonal electricity storage system to bridge off-peak periods in wind and solar production, combining
    • short-term storage of electricity in molten salts (in the form of heat) which, thanks to the Stirling engine, would enable storage using common materials with an efficiency of 70%.
    • the production of ammonia, which can then be converted into heat using a burner, and then into electricity using the Stirling engine.

The Stirling engine makes a wind- and solar-powered electricity system more reliable.

The Airthium company

Airthium was founded in March 2016 by Andreï Klochko and Franck Lahaye. The birth of Airthium is recounted in the interview given by Andreï Klochko for École polytechnique:

” The idea for Airthium germinated in 2008 when I became aware of a technology at the crossroads of fluid mechanics and electromagnetism, but it wasn’t until I had completed my thesis at the Plasma Physics Laboratory at X that I was able to apply it to energy storage by working on the design of a new type of gas compressor. In 2014, when we won the Gérondeau – Safran prize and the Concours mondial de l’innovation de Bpifrance, I realized that our project had convinced people and I realized its full potential. I then devoted myself to it full-time, and Airthium was officially created in March 2016.”

https://www.polytechnique.edu/fondation/actualites/toutes-les-actualites/airthium-la-start-qui-revolutionne-le-stockage-de-lenergie

The company was incubated by the prestigious Y Combinator in 2017. It raised €500k from several investors, including Y Combinator.

Housed atÉcole Polytechnique until 2019, the startup was until recently based at Air Liquide’s Innovation Campus, before moving this October to dedicated premises in Villebon-sur-Yvette (91).

It raised ~1.3 million euros in crowdfunding in 2021 and is currently raising a second round, again in crowdfunding (source: interview).

Impression d'écran de la page de présentation du crowdfunding Airthium, qui avait mobilisé au 13 octobre 2022; 366k$.
https://wefunder.com/airthium

On the industrial front, they are planning a 1kW prototype in 2023, a heat pump demonstrator the following year and a 1MW industrial model in 2025. (https://airthium.com/about_us)

Then, larger-scale heat pumps (20MW) would be available in 2028. Seasonal energy storage is planned for 2030 on a small scale (50MW) and 2035 on a large scale (1GW).

The Airthium team next to its Stirling engine Credits: Airthium

Questions and answers

– On the principle of the Airthium solution

  • Discover The Greentech (DTG): If I’ve understood correctly, you’re proposing an industrial heat pump capable of capturing heat between 100 and 500°C or atmospheric heat from -50°C and delivering it at the desired temperature, is that correct? What’s the difference between heat you can only capture at 100°C and atmospheric heat?
  • Airthium: Yes, our heat pump can capture waste heat (heat produced by a process but not recovered) or atmospheric heat and deliver it at the desired temperature (up to 550°C). We are able to collect heat from -50°C up to 550°C, so there’s no fundamental difference between atmospheric and 550°C heat.
    Depending on the temperature at which the heat is collected and released, the heat pump operates differently: the working fluid may change (water between 20°C and 80°C, oil up to 250°C and molten salts to reach 550°C), but it’s above all the COP (coefficient of performance) that is affected.
    A resistance has a COP of 1 (1 joule of electricity = 1 joule of heat), but the advantage of the heat pump is that it has a COP greater than 1. In our case, going from 20°C to 200°C we have a COP of 1.9, but if we go from 100°C to 200°C our COP is 2.7.
  • DTG: Can you explain in a few words how a heat pump works? How is it more efficient than a resistance heater? A layman would think that 1 joule of electrical energy would give 1 joule of heat. Is it more complicated than that?
  • Airthium: The greater-than-1 efficiency of the heat pump may seem surprising, but it’s based on thermodynamic principles. The heat pump’s job is to move calories from the cold source to the hot source. Electricity is therefore not used directly to create heat, but to move calories. In this way, it can be more efficient than resistance heating. In fact, they are already widely used in homes and industry.
  • DTG: How is heat transmitted? Air, liquid, metal?
  • Airthium: Heat is captured in the cold process by a heat exchanger, which transmits it to a fluid (water, oil, molten salts) which is then sent to our heat pump. Inside, it interacts with helium gas, which transfers calories from the cold source to the hot source. We then recover another fluid (water, oil, molten salts) that has been heated by the heat pump, which is sent to the heat exchanger on the hot side to reheat the hot process.

– On uses :

  • DTG: I see you’re talking about using your heat for cement. However, it seemed to me that, to remove the carbon from limestone, it had to be heated to extremely high temperatures (>1450°C). Do you go that high? The same question applies to glass and metal. For what processes and how can your process be used?
  • Airthium: Our heat pump can be used in the cement, metal and glass industries, but that doesn’t mean it’s used directly in the main process (metal or glass melting, for example). These industries require moderately high temperatures for other applications, such as drying, heat treatment, temperature maintenance… This is the kind of process we can help with.

– On the energy storage system:

[Here we’ll be discussing the schematic of their seasonal storage system in particular]

  • DTG: I’m having a bit of trouble understanding your diagram: why produce ammonia? Take heat from water? Is the “Airthium Stirling Engine” dependent on these two specific processes? Or are they examples of use?
  • Airthium: The Airthium Stirling Engine is the machine we build, which can be used both as a heat pump and as a Stirling engine. The Stirling engine is a thermal machine that can produce heat from electricity (heat pump mode, COP up to 3.5) or electricity from heat (engine mode, thermal>electric efficiency up to 50%). We plan to start by producing heat pumps to develop our technology and make the system more reliable, before entering the energy storage market (which requires a substantial capital investment).
    Our storage system works in a hybrid way: for daily storage we use molten salts or sand as purely thermal storage, but our main advantage is seasonal storage (very long duration), for which we need ammonia (NH3).
    With an energy mix based on renewables, there is a risk (a few times a year) of a major drop in production (more or less sun and wind at the same time). We therefore need to compensate for this shortfall with storage capacity.
    Ammonia is a synthetic fuel whose combustion generates no CO2, and is fifteen times cheaper to store than hydrogen. When there is a surplus of renewable energy production, we produce ammonia from electricity, then store it in large-capacity tanks in liquid form (it is easy to store, and there is already a whole industry that has mastered this technology). The parallel can be drawn with the natural gas reserves that are in use today. When demand exceeds production, the ammonia is burned (in a burner developed to limit NOx emissions) to heat the molten salts, which are then sent to the Stirling engine to generate electricity.
  • DTG: Can you give us an outline of this system? How efficient would it be? What would be the storage medium (liquid, gas, etc.)? Does the system’s stability require any special maintenance (maintaining temperature/pressure/other conditions)?
  • Airthium: The round-trip efficiency of thermal daily storage will be around 70% (compared with 80-90% for lithium-ion batteries, which discharge more quickly, use rare earths, are expensive and present a risk of thermal runaway). The fluid (molten salt or sand) is stored in thermally insulated tanks to minimize heat loss. Molten salt needs to be kept at a minimum temperature to prevent it from solidifying. This will be guaranteed by the minimum temperature of the tanks, which will be much higher than the solidification temperature, and when solar and wind power are lacking, by the combustion of ammonia.
    As mentioned above, the seasonal storage medium is liquid ammonia (-33°C under 1atm), with a return electrical efficiency of close to 30%. Its storage conditions are very similar to those of propane. Ammonia storage is already an established and mature industry, which we can build on.

Discussion with CEO Andrey Klochko

I then chatted with Airthium’s CEO, Andrey Klochko, to discuss a few points in greater depth, mainly around the energy storage solution. I’ve noted in [ ] the passages I’ve taken up or summarized.

The principle of the long-term energy storage system

  • DTG: So the daily storage solution would use highly available materials with an efficiency of 70%? What’s stopping this solution from being more sustainable?
  • Andrei Klochko: That is, to store for more than 40 hours?
  • DTG: Yes.
  • Andrei Klochko: It’s just too expensive. […] Seasonal energy storage compensates for a lack of solar and wind power, which […], 2 to 4 weeks a year, […] can drop significantly over very large territories at the same time. Whether it’s the whole of France or the whole of Europe. For those times, we’ll have to keep power plants [, currently mainly gas-fired, which will also] have to recoup their fixed costs with just 1 month’s energy sales. So either they sell their energy at a very high price, or they are subsidized. [For storage], it’s all a question of price per kWh. [Lithium-ion batteries cost $200 per kWh in capital […], with molten salt it’s $60 per kWh and for ammonia, it’s something like $2 per kWh. The problem is that $2 is an optimum. If you only use ammonia, then the ammonia production equipment is too expensive and, because of the yield (30%), you’ll need a solar [or wind] field that’s too big; if you only use molten salt, […] it’s too expensive. The optimum, to reach $2, is to use a mix of the two.

In other words, molten salt storage would make it possible to smooth out electricity production in the short term to limit the power requirements of ammonia production. The great advantage of ammonia is that it’s cheap to store. When production drops, the ammonia is burned and transformed into electricity using their Stirling engine, in a process that limits nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.

Then there’s the question of the power of the Stirling engine. Indeed, it will be used to smooth out the production of electricity for ammonia production throughout the year, and then, one month in the year, will have to burn all or a large part of the stored ammonia.

“Ammonia is produced in dribs and drabs all year round and burned one month of the year. So there’s a power asymmetry. If we ever have 1GW of power output, then the solar field will make 3 to 5 GW peak […] and the burner will make something like 2GW thermal, but the Haber-Bosch power plants the electrolysers will make something like 600 MW. [By way of comparison, if we depended solely on ammonia, we’d need at least 3 GW of electrolysers, plus a solar field more than twice as big. All these numbers depend, of course, very much on the case under consideration].”

Limiting NOx

Using a combination of burner and Stirling engine at the end of the chain is also an advantage in terms of limiting NOx:

  • DTG: In your interview for X, you talked about converting renewable fuels into electricity. Is your solution more efficient in this respect than a conventional (turbine) system?
  • Andrei Klochko: The advantage is that it’s mutualized [=the Stirling engine is used both for short-term storage by heat pumping, and for seasonal storage by ammonia]. [A strength of our solution] is that there is a combination of small advantages [which add up to one big advantage]. We could have burned the ammonia in a turbine, but that [isn’t interesting], because it produces lots of NOx. We compensate for this by using an external burner [equipment that can be optimized to emit less NOx natively (before filtration), which facilitates filtration].

The trade-off between fertilizer and electricity

  • DTG: What is the trade-off between using the ammonia produced to regenerate electricity and using it to make fertilizer?
  • Andrei Klochko: Both work. The first few times the system is installed, it will still be expensive, so it will be installed on islands or in Alaska [for example], in [remote] places. The more we install, the lower the unit costs will be, and eventually we’ll be pretty cheap to produce fertilizer too. […] That’s why we have the heat pump value proposition in the first place, to get the cost of the Stirling engine down to a minimum and industrialize it [following the example of the automotive industry].

Water supply

Andrei also explained a little about the bottom of the Airthium storage system diagram. The energy storage system uses water in a closed cycle and is exposed to freezing if it uses air/water that is too cold (which can be problematic in very cold countries). To counter this, water is stored for cooling purposes. There would also be cooling towers, as the system would still radiate heat, especially in hot weather. As regards the need for water for ammonia synthesis, a large proportion is recovered during ammonia combustion, by condensation of the water contained in the burner exhaust stream.

Agronutris is a startup developing industrial insect farming for food and fertilizer. Founded in 2011, it has closed a €50 million funding round with investors in 2021.

Agronutris: industrial insect farming

The Toulouse-based company raises mainly black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia Illucens).

The insects are then processed into three products:

  • a flour, “ultra’in”, “produced from de-lipped and dehydrated black soldier fly larvae”, suitable for aquaculture and pets.
  • oil, “Liboost”, obtained by “delipidation of insect proteins”, rich in lauric acid, an easily digestible saturated fatty acid.
  • a fertilizer, “Fairtil”, derived from the droppings of black soldier fly larvae and rich in macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, NPK).

They also systemically reared mealworms (Tenebriomolitor) and crickets(Gryllodes sigillatus), but the black soldier fly was more competitive. The variables are numerous, both in terms of insect biology (mating, oviposition, hatching, growth, metamorphosis) and environmental technology (temperature, hygrometry, density, gassing, air treatment).

It would be interesting to have an “input-output” balance to better understand the ecological interest of this approach.

The mealworm could nevertheless be produced for human consumption.

Human food

The human food market is much more difficult to access. Regulations are much stricter. The startup would be “the first company in Europe authorized to market insects for human consumption”. (1)

The second obstacle is psychological reluctance. However, this could be very slight when compared, for example, with flour or processed products. There is also the question of price.

Agronutris, the company

In 2012, insect proteins for aquaculture and petfood were authorized in the European Union.

In 2015, they obtained ISO 22000 certification

In 2019, they secured a grant of 8.3 million euros, which helped finance their first plant, which would be located in Réthel.

In September 2021, Agrinutris raised

  • 50 million euros from the SPI fund, Mirova, Nutergia Group, Crédit Agricole Nord-Est and business angel Bertrand Jelensperger
  • 10 million euros under the France Relance plan
  • 40 million euros in loans

The funds raised will enable the company to deploy two industrial units capable of converting 280,000 tonnes of bio-residues per year into insects. The first, at Rethel in the Ardennes, is due to open in late 2022. (1)

  • (1) https://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/agronutris-leve-100-millions-d-euros-pour-industrialiser-la-fabrication-de-produits-a-base-d-insectes.N1145947

Accessible oil reserves took 600 million years to form, and 200 years to be almost exhausted. Pumping it is going to be increasingly difficult, and while it’s probably a good thing that we’re stopping using it as a fuel, it’s also true that it’s an important raw material in many industries.

Black gold derivatives are not limited to the fuel tanks of our cars and the mountains of plastic waste. They’re also important in the medical, cosmetics and food sectors, so many startups are looking for ways to find more sustainable materials.

AFYREN has developed a technology that combines fermentation and extraction operations in a single process to extract molecules from organic waste that can be used by the chemical industry.

One of the main strengths of the process is its raw material: waste. This can be beet pulp, manure, green waste or even household refuse. The process itself produces almost no waste.

History and progress of Afyren

The project was born in 2012 and its first pilot saw the light of day in 2017. After raising €21 million in January 2019, the company set up a joint venture financed to the tune of €60 million to operate a plant capable of generating 16,000 tons of organic acids and €35 million in annual sales. It will be listed on Euronext on October 1, 2021.

FAQ

How much money has Afyren raised?

Afyren has raised €21.5 million.

Where is Afyren located?

Afyren is based in Saint-Beauzite, Auvergne.

Adionics has invented a new technology for extracting minerals from the sea (potassium, lithium or sodium) in a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly way.

The startup agreed to answer our questions. This is a translation, the original is in french.

What environmental issues is Adionics addressing?

Adionics is an innovative start-up founded in 2012 in Paris. Our liquid-liquid extraction technology makes it possible to selectively extract salts from water, such as lithium, potassium or sodium salts. The technology was developed on an eco-responsible basis: no water consumption, low energy consumption, no chemical reagents and a waste-to-product approach. Indeed, selective extraction makes it possible to produce products from the extracted salts (soda, bleach, lithium products, iodine, etc.)

What does Adionics offer?

Adionics has developed a liquid-liquid extraction technology for high-value salts, such as Lithium, Iodides, Potassium, Sodium, etc. The salts present in the effluent are extracted at room temperature, then hot reconcentrated in a brine at the end of the process.

This liquid-liquid extraction process enables lithium to be recovered, purified and concentrated in an hour, whereas the traditional method (evaporation in brine) takes between 9 and 18 months.

What added value do you offer your customers?

We offer our customers a new technology. We believe that it can revolutionize the mining industry by bringing a very short brine processing time, a green and efficient approach with doubled lithium extraction yields and very high purity. Similarly, Adionics will provide new, virtuous solutions for the treatment and reclamation of various brines: solving an environmental problem while creating value!

Have you identified any competitors? If so, what are your competitive advantages?

Technologies are being developed around lithium extraction. They are driven by mining companies, often using the same extractant that has long been known, but with limited selectivity. Other technologies are being developed, but are still based on conventional approaches involving the massive use of chemical reagents. What sets our approach apart is that our regeneration is thermal, which is unique worldwide, and avoids the use of chemicals. What’s more, our extractants are remarkably selective, giving us access to very pure production, which is of great economic value in this market.

What’s preventing you from fully occupying your market?

We are currently in the industrialization phase. We have carried out 2 industrial pilots that have demonstrated the performance of our desalination technology. Our next step is to carry out an industrial pilot on lithium extraction, which will enable us to launch the first industrial units within 2 years. The market is booming, and we need to demonstrate the feasibility of our technology to a mining sector that is fairly conservative, but aware of the need to modify its production methods to make them more efficient and greener.