Electrified Thermal Solutions, an MIT-derived company that has spent over 12 years developing electrified firebrick technology, announced the successful installation of two Joule Hive thermal batteries at a cement manufacturing facility operated by Holcim, one of the world’s largest cement producers. The announcement marks a significant milestone in commercializing a technology designed to address one of the most challenging industrial decarbonization problems.
The Joule Hive system uses specially modified firebricks that conduct electricity, heating to approximately 1800 degrees Celsius as electrons pass through them. The firebricks achieve 95 percent efficiency and can store heat for up to three days in an insulated enclosure roughly the size of an elevator. This technology addresses a critical gap in industrial decarbonization: roughly 20 percent of global energy consumption is used for process heat in sectors like steel, aluminum, and cement production, which historically relied on burning fossil fuels to reach necessary temperatures. Until the advent of the Joule Hive, achieving such high temperatures using electricity was not commercially feasible.
Cement production accounts for approximately eight percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, making it one of the hardest industrial sectors to decarbonize. The deployment at Holcim follows successful testing of a commercial-scale Joule Hive system at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, which accumulated over 1,000 hours of operation. Holcim will serve as an investment partner to Electrified Thermal Solutions as the companies work to evaluate and expand deployment of the technology.
The Holcim project represents the third global industrial partner for the company, following earlier work with Ashland, a specialty chemical manufacturer. Ashland is receiving up to 35 million dollars in matching grants from the Department of Energy to deploy Joule Hive thermal batteries at its plant in Calvert City, Kentucky. That deployment is projected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from steam generation by nearly 70 percent, replacing methane-fired boilers and addressing a facility that previously released 72,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually from fuel combustion.
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