Episode 151 | Carbon Complement | Energy Dome
I am a sucker for new forms of energy storage. Energy Dome, an Italian company based in Milan, has developed a solution for using CO2 as the storage medium.
My guest, Founder and CEO Claudio Spadacini, believes their technology is key to a low carbon energy future. Though the key is not in sequestering CO2. It lies in CO2’s unique physical properties, which I would describe as squishy.
Carbon Dioxide is easier to compress than air. He compared his solution to compressed air energy storage (CAES), which we explored in Episode 57, and liquid air energy storage (LAES), which a panelist explained in Episode 101. Claudio says Energy Dome’s compression and heat recovery technology is more energy-efficient than CAES (compression) or LAES (freezing).
The only drawback is that CO2 needs to be contained when it is not compressed. To hold on to the gas, it resides uncompressed in a large inflatable dome—hence the name.
“It is a very efficient process which can work with existing components that can be supplied from existing supply chains,” says Claudio. “And that also makes the technology one of the few, aside from lithium-ion batteries, to go into the market right now.”
Energy Dome was founded in 2020. It began operations of a 2.5 MW / 4 MW/h facility in Sardinia last June. Claudio says the full-size unit will be 25 MW and 200 MW/h. Want more storage? Simply stack the units.
“We want to supply to the market a standard module, ‘out from a catalog,’” he says, “which are very standardized, repeatable, no technical risk.”
I was curious is the current system, which re-uses the CO2 (“closed loop”) could be modified to pass-through CO2 on it’s way to permanent storage. Claudio says talks are underway to possibly incorporate Direct Air Capture (DAC) or carbon capture from a fossil fuel plant.
For now they say the key to success is growth, and the market is hungry for long-duration energy storage that is ready to build now.
“The market is huge,” he says, “and we cannot grown organically as fast as the market needs.”
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