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Echogen: From waste heat to clean energy
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: October 18, 2016
The United State electric generation industry squanders over 50 percent of its generated power in the form of waste heat and gasses, according to the United States Department of Energy.
One Akron company, Echogen, has developed technology to turn that waste heat back into electricity—and it has major international corporations and the government very interested in their progress.
“We are the scrap dealers of energy,” said Philip Brennan, the Irish native who now heads Echogen. “We are in the unglamorous business of repurposing industrial heat and trying to make it into something useful.”
Brennan and inventor Michael Gurin formed Echogen in Akron on April Fool’s day 2007 “so we wouldn’t take ourselves too seriously,” Brennan said. Gurin and Brennan originally met in the “confectionary space.”
Nevertheless, repurposing industrial waste heat into electricity is a serious business that can go a long way toward solving a number of energy production needs, he said. The technology basically consists of using excess industrial heat to power a turbine that makes electricity. Brennan said that kind of technology has been around for a long time but the difference in Echogen’s mechanics is the medium that is heated to drive the turbines,
The Echogen technology uses “supercritical CO2”, which is carbon dioxide in a state somewhere between a liquid and a gas.
“Echogen has been developing and demonstrating design know-how and protected intellectual property in supercritical CO2 cycles, which have a broad range of applications,” said Thomas Soulas, a spokesperson for Siemens’ power and gas division, which has a contract with Echogen.
According to Brennan, supercritical CO2 can be heated to as high a temperature as necessary without breaking down.
It is also non-corrosive and non-poisonous, and has zero environmental impact. That latter fact is important to Belfast native Brennan, who said that, “I was always interested in the environment. Growing up in Europe, you are automatically more sensitive to your personal impact. Recycling was something I was raised on. Also,” he added, “as a Catholic, there is a little of the ‘steward of the planet’ view.’ I always look at environmental impact.”
He and Gurin never set out to develop this particular method for recycling heat, said Brennan. “Part of the process of invention is that you often end up making something different form your original plan.”
“Michael (Gurin) is a very talented and diverse inventor,” said Brennan, “who I liked from when we worked together in another local startup. I liked his approach to discussing the world’s problems. So I asked him what else he was working on. It turned out that he had a license from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA for a heat pump that was conceptually designed for the space shuttle but was never developed.”
Brennan said he was, at once, “fascinated by the technology and how Michael thought.”
The heat pump was very small. “We thought that we might be able to expand the technology into a very compact heat absorption system,” said Brennan. Teamed up with (and by) a first angel investor, Echogen was born.
But the path to developing that heat pump as a commercially viable energy absorption system was long and tortuous—to the point that the final technology looked very little like the initial design, said Brennan.
The key, he said, was introducing supercritical CO2 into the system. “The incumbent technology (for converting heat into energy) is steam,” said Brennan. The introduction of supercritical CO2 was their “magic moment.” It made the project commercially viable.
As the process went through testing, Brennan fundraised and created the company, which started out in a small office space, moved to the Akron Global Business Accelerator and which is now located near Akron Children’s Hospital.
The company currently employs about 18 people with some stationed at the Akron headquarters and others working remotely. Brennan said that he has had great success recruiting engineers locally and that one of Echogen’s alumni engineers now heads the Hyperloop project.
The Echogen office includes a large basement testing area, filled with high-energy equipment that Brennan warns visitors not to touch.
“There is a 1.53 megawatt power plant in the basement and one with the potential of seven megawatts that was located at a Siemens test facility,” he said, adding “Stay Out!” The turbines are “high speed, high pressure and oil-free,” said Brennan. They are also very expensive, but they are an example of the cutting edge energy technology that Echogen works with.
Brennan said that the company’s basic business model includes three possible options, including “making and selling the engine, owning the engine and selling the power, and licensing the technology.”
Over time, several major international corporations and the United States government have gotten on board with Echogen. A small company like Echogen cannot compete alone against the large power companies, Brennan said, so he is concentrating his sales and licensing efforts in niche markets. These include the oil and gas and shipping industries.
Because the technology comes in such a small footprint, it is particularly applicable to mobile energy plants like cargo ships. Brennan said that Echogen has licensed its technology, for instance, to General Electric’s marine transportation division, which makes power plants for boats and ships, large and small.
A substantial part of Echogen’s potential lies in its licensing agreement with the international giant corporation Siemens, which was signed in 2011, said Siemens spokesperson Thomas Soulas.
“Dresser-Rand, part of Siemens Power and Gas Division, and Echogen executed an agreement that, among other terms, provides Dresser-Rand with the exclusive license to commercialize the technology developed by Echogen in specific markets, including Oil & Gas, in waste heat to power installations,” said Soulas. “Commercialization of the technology entails the production, procurement, and sale of the equipment system embodying the Echogen supercritical CO2 cycle technology, for fuel-free and emission-free power.”
Echogen also has a working agreement with the South Korean company Doosan.
Brennan said that the United States Department of Energy is in the process of investing $100 million into a one-of-a-kind, supercritical CO2 test facility, and that DOE is very interested in Echogen’s technology. The company has been invited to bid on the project.
In the meantime, Brennan remains in his corner office with windows but no heat, fundraising, and he says proud of his involvement in an industry that may help solve the world’s energy crisis.