<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/mars-launches-australia-first-thermal-energy-battery-to-cook-petfood/>
"Multinational food and pet food company Mars has found an inventive way to
lower gas consumption at its Wodonga petfood factory, through the use of
super-heated ‘green steam’ created with electric heaters and graphite.
This is believed to be Australia’s first commercial thermal energy storage
(TES) system in Australia and has reduced the company’s gas consumption at the
factory by 20%.
“Our ambitions to be fully decarbonised – 100% net zero – by 2050 and within
direct operations, that target is 100% renewable by 2040,” Paul Matuschka, Mars
Petcare Australia’s supply quality lead, told
RenewEconomy.
“We’ve only got 16 years left to solve this problem.”
The site – which produces small aluminium trays of wet petfood – needs to cook
the food using high heat. This is traditionally done with gas, but the new TES
system uses graphite superheated steam instead.
Mars has partnered with Graphite Energy, which has designed the one megawatt
TES system, which is housed in a bright orange shipping container.
The technology inputs energy from PV or grid power, and using resistance
heaters, can heat graphite up to around 700 degrees Celsius. Then this heat can
be discharged by running water through pipes and producing superheated steam,
or stored as a type of battery for later use.
The ‘battery’ can store over 5 megawatt hours of storage, can be held until
overnight when required, and the graphite system doesn’t degrade over its life.
“It will displace around 10 terajoules of natural gas through the year, which
is about 500 tonnes of carbon avoided,” said Matuschka.
“We are producing up to about 10 tonne of steam per day.”"
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
