PRESS RELEASE
14/12/2021
New Danish energy storage technology receives major public grant to build demonstration plant with key industry partners
Seaborg and sister company Hyme have been awarded a public grant from the Danish Energy Technology and Demonstration Program (EUDP). Together with a consortium of industry and academic partners, the project is to demonstrate the world’s first energy storage facility based on inexpensive hydroxide salts. The total budget is EUR3.3m (DKK24.6m) and the demonstration plant is to be built in the Danish city of Esbjerg by 2023.
“We are very proud to be awarded the EUDP grant, and we are excited to unveil the excellent partnership behind this project. Together, we will demonstrate the world’s first energy storage facility based on inexpensive molten hydroxide salts,” says CEO in Hyme and co-founder of both Seaborg and Hyme, Ask Emil Løvschall-Jensen.
“The purpose of the project is to test and validate key technology of Seaborg and Hyme outside the laboratory. We will do so in the demonstration plant that will be deployed in Esbjerg in 2023 together with our great partners. This project will enable the commercial construction of inexpensive, giga-sized molten salt storage systems,” says co-founder and CEO of Seaborg, Troels Schønfeldt.
The partners in the project are Sulzer, Alfa Laval, SAN Electro Heat, Kirt x Thomsen, Aalborg University, Energy Cluster Denmark, and Esbjerg utility company DIN Forsyning, who will provide the site for the demonstration plant:
“We are very happy to be the hosts of this pioneer project within energy storage and are also hoping we can together find short-cuts to bring the technology even more rapidly to market.”
Claus Nielsen, business development director, DIN Forsyning in Esbjerg
The key elements of the EUDP-financed project are to demonstrate system and component integration of the technology in a demonstration plant to serve as a stepping stone for commercial plants. This includes:
• Build a functional demonstration plant designed for scalability
• Demonstrate high temperatures storage at above 600°C
• Design, integrate, and test all key components
• Validate scalability of design and subsystems to plants with 1 GWh thermal storage capacity
THE TECHNOLOGY
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Molten hydroxide salts have excellent abilities when it comes to storing vast amounts of heat. A 1 GWh facility with sodium hydroxides can store enough energy to support around 100,000 households with electricity and heat for ten hours and requires no more space than the plot of a family house.
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Sodium hydroxide is a commodity produced from seawater as a by-product from chlorine production and comes at down to 1/6 of the price of the current, standard salts used for storage. Hydroxides can contain more heat per salt unit, making it more efficient and reducing the amount of salt needed compared to current salt uses. This reduces the cost of salt as a storage medium by approximately 90%. Hyme expects to be able to halve the price of long-term and large-scale energy storage facilities independently of geographical constraints.
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Molten salt energy storage has the great advantage of being easy to scale in size, so it can be built to fit industry needs and for grid-scale storage for large wind and solar farms. The key technology enabler here is the chemistry control that limits the corrosion of structural materials in contact with the molten salt. Hyme has been granted the rights to mature the concept and take it from the laboratory to a global market within energy storage.
ABOUT HYME
The name Hyme is a contraction of Hydroxide and to melt.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer: Ask Emil Løvschall-Jensen
Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer: Nis Benn
Chairman of the Board: Navid Samandari
Hyme develops energy storage solutions based on the use of molten hydroxides as storage
medium. The proprietary technology is secured through several patents.
Hyme is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, but will be building a larger team with international
talent in the years to come.
Vision
A world where sustainable energy is always available.
Mission
Accelerating a sustainable energy transition by leveraging inexpensive hydroxide salts for large-scale energy storage.