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Turning Old Cans Into Clean Energy · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Out of everything we cover on this show, out
0:23
Speaker 1: of all the themes I do, I have to admit
0:26
Speaker 1: have a favorite. My favorite theme. My favorite thing we
0:29
Speaker 1: cover is the energy transition. There are a bunch of
0:33
Speaker 1: reasons I love the energy transition shows. One reason the
0:38
Speaker 1: giant obvious global stakes right fighting climate change to the
0:44
Speaker 1: people working on the energy transition. The people I talk
0:47
Speaker 1: to in these shows actually make me feel hope rather
0:51
Speaker 1: than despair. It's a big one and three. Reason number three,
0:55
Speaker 1: which is related to reason number two, is there is
0:58
Speaker 1: just so much creativity in this field, in this set
1:03
Speaker 1: of industries. There's so much of people looking at the
1:06
Speaker 1: world and trying to think at a really basic, fundamental,
1:10
Speaker 1: kind of first principles level, how can we solve these
1:14
Speaker 1: giant problems? How can we get the carbon free energy
1:18
Speaker 1: we need at a price we can afford. I'm Jacob
1:27
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
1:29
Speaker 1: I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
1:33
Speaker 1: My guest today is Peter Goddard. He's the co founder
1:36
Speaker 1: and CEO of Found Energy. Found Energy is in its
1:39
Speaker 1: early stages, but the fundamental idea behind the company is
1:42
Speaker 1: so creative and audacious and frankly so intellectually fun that
1:48
Speaker 1: I really wanted to talk to Peter. Peter's problem is this,
1:52
Speaker 1: how can you use aluminum, just regular aluminum, like from
1:56
Speaker 1: an empty can of coke, as a new source of energy.
2:00
Speaker 1: The idea of using aluminum as an energy source first
2:03
Speaker 1: came to Peter not as a way to deal with
2:05
Speaker 1: problems on Earth, but to deal with problems in space,
2:09
Speaker 1: specifically problems on Europa. Europa, as you may already know,
2:13
Speaker 1: is an icy moon of Jupiter. At the time the
2:16
Speaker 1: idea came to him, Peter was working at JPL at
2:19
Speaker 1: NASA's Jet propulsion LAUD. He was part of a team
2:22
Speaker 1: designing a spaceship to send to Europa. The idea was
2:26
Speaker 1: that the spaceship would land on the Moon and then
2:28
Speaker 1: drill down through the thick sheet of ice to the
2:31
Speaker 1: water below to look for signs of life. But drilling
2:35
Speaker 1: through all that ice was going to take a lot
2:36
Speaker 1: of energy, and Peter and his colleagues were trying to
2:39
Speaker 1: figure out how to send that energy all the way
2:41
Speaker 1: to Europa to this moon orbiting Jupiter.
2:44
Speaker 2: When you send something into space, mass is super precious,
2:49
Speaker 2: you know, every gram is very expensive, you know, in
2:53
Speaker 2: terms of payload, and so we were sort of sitting
2:56
Speaker 2: around debating, you know, like what could go in this
3:00
Speaker 2: like little space in that spacecraft that would pack enough energy.
3:05
Speaker 2: So we're talking about different lithium ion batteries, for example,
3:09
Speaker 2: and I'm sitting there realizing that we're not really thinking
3:12
Speaker 2: holistically enough about this problem because the framing and the
3:15
Speaker 2: shell and the structural members of the spacecraft are made
3:19
Speaker 2: from aluminum, which is you know, twenty time twenty to
3:21
Speaker 2: forty times more energy dense than those lithium ion batteries.
3:25
Speaker 2: Like I'm looking at these renderings of these spacecraft that
3:28
Speaker 2: are sitting on the surface of Europa and then realizing like,
3:32
Speaker 2: oh my god, most of this aluminum is doing absolutely nothing,
3:35
Speaker 2: Like there's basically it's microgravity on these or on these
3:39
Speaker 2: moons that you know, they don't need to be they
3:42
Speaker 2: don't need to withstand crazy forces. Once they're there, they
3:45
Speaker 2: have to survive launch and then once they're there and landing,
3:48
Speaker 2: and then once they're there essentially doing nothing. And I
3:51
Speaker 2: thought this is insane, like why are we not why
3:55
Speaker 2: we're not utilizing this this energy just sitting around when
3:58
Speaker 2: you know, every single gram that you send into space
4:01
Speaker 2: is so precious. So I pitched this idea of saying, like,
4:04
Speaker 2: you know what if we could consume that aluminum for energy,
4:07
Speaker 2: that would dramatically reduce the constraints on what needs to
4:11
Speaker 2: go in that in that energy storage box there?
4:15
Speaker 1: And what did? What did? What was the response when
4:17
Speaker 1: you pitched that idea?
4:18
Speaker 2: The response was essentially, you know that that just might
4:21
Speaker 2: be crazy enough to work.
4:22
Speaker 1: And do they say that every day at JPL. People
4:24
Speaker 1: love saying that at JFL, I've had they do. There's
4:27
Speaker 1: a lot of out of.
4:28
Speaker 2: The box thinkers over there. It was, It's a wonderful
4:31
Speaker 2: place to work.
4:32
Speaker 1: So what happens you have this idea? What happened?
4:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're sort of sitting around and bouncing ideas
4:38
Speaker 2: off one another. I proposed this idea and and you know,
4:42
Speaker 2: people sort of dismissed it immediately and then thought from
4:45
Speaker 2: and realized, actually, you know, there might be something here.
4:49
Speaker 2: So I actually got some some funds to start my
4:53
Speaker 2: own research lab sort of within JPL, to to take
4:56
Speaker 2: a look at this. I sort of cheekily called it
4:58
Speaker 2: the self Cannibalizing Robot Project.
5:01
Speaker 1: Because the spaceship is going to go to a moon
5:03
Speaker 1: of Jupiter and then eat itself, burn itself up to
5:06
Speaker 1: provide energy for its for its work.
5:08
Speaker 2: Exactly, it's going to assume that super energy, dense exoskeleton
5:11
Speaker 2: that it no longer needs.
5:13
Speaker 1: Like, what does that actually look like in your mind? Like,
5:15
Speaker 1: so this thing is there, it's on this moon of Jupiter.
5:19
Speaker 1: What actually happens?
5:20
Speaker 2: So to give you an example of how this might look,
5:22
Speaker 2: So the spacecraft would have these aluminum landing legs. They
5:27
Speaker 2: would land on the surface of this this icy moon,
5:30
Speaker 2: and those legs would essentially cork screw into the ice
5:34
Speaker 2: and once they're there, they undergo this process called activation,
5:38
Speaker 2: where you have this large chunk of aluminium. It can
5:40
Speaker 2: actually get broken down by water. It's basically a rusting process,
5:44
Speaker 2: but accelerated, you know, like a million times. And the
5:48
Speaker 2: process is exothermic as well. So as that aluminum starts exothermically,
5:52
Speaker 2: it is releasing heat, reacting with that water, it's producing
5:54
Speaker 2: hydrogen gas. These legs actually leave behind these little underground
5:59
Speaker 2: caverns of hydrogen gas. So the leg detaches, it degrades,
6:04
Speaker 2: it disintegrates the rusts, and then it leaves behind this
6:07
Speaker 2: little cavern of hydrogen which then that robot or maybe
6:11
Speaker 2: other robots can navigate over and tap into as a
6:14
Speaker 2: refueling station.
6:16
Speaker 1: So the landing legs decay, they leave behind hydrogen, and
6:21
Speaker 1: that hydrogen is fuel that can then power the drill
6:25
Speaker 1: that's going to go deep down into the.
6:26
Speaker 2: Ice exactly, or communications or you know, imagery equipment.
6:31
Speaker 1: So did it get anywhere?
6:34
Speaker 2: So we ended up proving out some of the core
6:38
Speaker 2: aspects of that technology. The specific program I was working on,
6:42
Speaker 2: the funding was sort of called into question. You know,
6:45
Speaker 2: these are big congressional It's basically a line item in
6:49
Speaker 2: a congressional budget, and for whatever reason, that went away
6:52
Speaker 2: and the interest waned.
6:55
Speaker 1: And you leave when your project gets canceled.
6:59
Speaker 2: So I, yes, I ended up leaving and going back
7:03
Speaker 2: to school to further this concept. And I had found
7:08
Speaker 2: a professor that I had worked with as an undergrad,
7:10
Speaker 2: Doug Heart, who was really excited to take this technology
7:15
Speaker 2: to the next level where we could actually use it
7:17
Speaker 2: for Earth applications.
7:19
Speaker 1: Huh. So use it for Earth applications is a big difference.
7:23
Speaker 1: Like you had a spaceship that eats itself, which seems
7:26
Speaker 1: like very elegant and very reasonable, right, because the core
7:29
Speaker 1: idea is like, oh, it's really hard to get to Jupiter.
7:31
Speaker 1: It's really hard to get you know, the marginal gram
7:35
Speaker 1: of stuff to Jupiter. So if we can use the
7:37
Speaker 1: spaceship itself, that's amazing. Like it's not obvious to me
7:41
Speaker 1: that you'd be like, oh, the Jupiter think got canceled,
7:43
Speaker 1: but let's use it on Earth, Like why is that
7:45
Speaker 1: a why does that even come to mind?
7:47
Speaker 2: So, for one, you know, I was really obsessed with
7:50
Speaker 2: doing something Earth related. You know, I spent all my
7:54
Speaker 2: time every waking second, thinking externally, thinking about the Solar System,
7:59
Speaker 2: thinking about these other planets, life elsewhere, realizing how precious
8:03
Speaker 2: and especial and interesting it is that we have life
8:08
Speaker 2: on Earth now and uh, and wanting to do something
8:12
Speaker 2: to preserve that just sort of a sense of like
8:14
Speaker 2: cosmic you know, beauty if you if you will.
8:17
Speaker 1: Like having looked at these other planets and moons, is like, boy,
8:20
Speaker 1: that'd be a way harder place to live than Earth.
8:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, you'r lived ex I was
8:25
Speaker 2: living in la at the time, and like, there's so
8:27
Speaker 2: much to point to and and and think. Was sort
8:30
Speaker 2: of miserable at the place. You know, you're stuck in
8:32
Speaker 2: traffic and you look over and someone's sort of screaming
8:35
Speaker 2: to themselves in the car next next to you, and
8:37
Speaker 2: and realizing, you know, existence on life is really hard.
8:40
Speaker 2: But when you spend so much time looking at at
8:43
Speaker 2: existence or the possibility exist on other planets, you realize,
8:46
Speaker 2: you know, we we have it pretty good. And you know,
8:48
Speaker 2: we've spent actually literally billions of years adapting to to
8:52
Speaker 2: the gravity of Earth and to the pressures and to
8:55
Speaker 2: the temperatures. And you know, why, why waste that? Why
8:58
Speaker 2: waste that? So?
9:00
Speaker 1: Okay, so you you start looking down instead of looking up,
9:06
Speaker 1: Uh wha, what happens?
9:09
Speaker 2: So I started thinking about, okay, where where else might
9:14
Speaker 2: we find energy that's being underutilized on Earth? And I
9:21
Speaker 2: realized that there was a lot of aluminum sitting around
9:24
Speaker 2: doing nothing on Earth. You know, it's I looked into
9:27
Speaker 2: aluminium recycling, realized that there's a bit of green washing
9:30
Speaker 2: going on. We don't do as good of a job
9:32
Speaker 2: as we think. And you know, it's just it's more
9:34
Speaker 2: difficult to recycle aluminum than we're led to believe.
9:38
Speaker 1: Often, even aluminum cans. I would think aluminum cans would
9:41
Speaker 1: all be uniform and therefore relatively manageable to recycle. Not
9:47
Speaker 1: so well.
9:47
Speaker 2: We've created an interesting problem for ourselves there, because an
9:50
Speaker 2: aluminum can is actually two different allays. There's the sort
9:54
Speaker 2: of cap is a separate piece from the body, which
9:56
Speaker 2: needs to be deep drawn, and so you need basically
10:00
Speaker 2: different properties for the manufacturing. And you know, when you
10:02
Speaker 2: open the can, you want it to sort of snap
10:05
Speaker 2: open and be very satisfying.
10:07
Speaker 1: That snap if it's destroying the world, that's an unfortunate
10:10
Speaker 1: consequence exactly.
10:12
Speaker 2: But with the body, you don't want that snap when
10:13
Speaker 2: you're when you're manufacturing it. And so so they end
10:16
Speaker 2: up using two different alloys, and so when you melt
10:18
Speaker 2: it back down, you basically can only make one of those,
10:22
Speaker 2: and you have to add some primary aluminum s virgin
10:26
Speaker 2: aluminum in order to do that, because you have to
10:29
Speaker 2: dilute out some of the impurities. All that to say,
10:31
Speaker 2: it's it's a much harder problem than people think. And
10:35
Speaker 2: what that means practically speaking is that a lot of
10:38
Speaker 2: aluminum just ends up in landfills. You know, it ends
10:41
Speaker 2: up getting exported to countries where manual labor is cheaper,
10:44
Speaker 2: so that they can pick out those impurities by hand
10:47
Speaker 2: sorting is not quite there yet.
10:49
Speaker 1: Uh and uh and and so.
10:51
Speaker 2: You end up with billions of tons of aluminum that
10:53
Speaker 2: that is underutilized.
10:56
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about aluminum for a minute, because
10:59
Speaker 1: it's really interesting, right, Like, there is this whole history
11:02
Speaker 1: of aluminum. You know, if you go back a couple
11:05
Speaker 1: hundred years at this point, right, it is used to
11:08
Speaker 1: be this wildly precious metal because even though it's super
11:13
Speaker 1: abundant in the in the earth, it is pretty much
11:17
Speaker 1: always bound up with something else, usually oxygen. Right, there
11:21
Speaker 1: was this moment that everybody writes about it, and I
11:24
Speaker 1: hope it's true. Where like Napoleon the third right, the Napoleon.
11:28
Speaker 1: After Napoleon supposedly like for his like B list guests
11:33
Speaker 1: would give them plates of like silver and gold, but
11:35
Speaker 1: the A list guests got the aluminum plates because there
11:38
Speaker 1: was this wildly rare, beautiful thing. But then somebody figured
11:42
Speaker 1: out how to make illuminum much more easily, right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
11:47
Speaker 2: I mean, so if you think about like the ages
11:50
Speaker 2: of society, right, there's like the Stone Age, and then
11:53
Speaker 2: there's the Iron Age and the Bronze Age, and you
11:56
Speaker 2: know the order in which those occurred are basically how
11:59
Speaker 2: how close to that useful form are they found in nature?
12:04
Speaker 2: So obviously the stone age triviual. The stone is the
12:07
Speaker 2: stone is a stone.
12:09
Speaker 1: Finding a rock is the easy part.
12:10
Speaker 2: Yes, you put a rock on top of another rock.
12:13
Speaker 2: You do that a couple more times, and you've got
12:15
Speaker 2: you've got stonehengs, you've got you've got houses, you've got
12:18
Speaker 2: you know, we were we were doing a good job
12:21
Speaker 2: stacking stones. Slightly more complicated, you know, you have metals
12:26
Speaker 2: that are more closely found in their elemental forms, so
12:30
Speaker 2: things like copper. And then you have things that are
12:33
Speaker 2: not found as a pure metal but can be easily reduced.
12:38
Speaker 2: So something like iron, for example, is a little bit
12:40
Speaker 2: easier where you can take the iron ore and you
12:43
Speaker 2: can heat it up with some some carbon usually just
12:46
Speaker 2: from some some charcoal, uh, and get a workable metal there.
12:51
Speaker 1: But this is way more complex than stones. We've made
12:53
Speaker 1: some technological progress there, yes, so big leap, maybe the biggest.
12:57
Speaker 1: It's a huge leap.
12:58
Speaker 2: Uh. And and then and then you get to aluminum, which,
13:01
Speaker 2: despite being extremely abundant, is like you said, is not
13:05
Speaker 2: found in its its base metal elemental form. It's found
13:09
Speaker 2: as various aluminum oxides, and aluminum binds super tightly to
13:15
Speaker 2: those oxygen atoms, and so to rip them off requires
13:19
Speaker 2: a lot of energy.
13:20
Speaker 1: Right, And as I understand it, because of that, aluminum
13:23
Speaker 1: in its pure form was super rare until like well
13:27
Speaker 1: into the nineteenth century, and then there was essentially this
13:31
Speaker 1: technological breakthrough, right.
13:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the eighteen hundreds, independently, an American scientist Hall
13:38
Speaker 2: and the I believe a French scientist Hero both figured
13:42
Speaker 2: out an electrochemical process that worked, and yeah, within the
13:48
Speaker 2: span of a couple decades, you know, they were actually
13:51
Speaker 2: able to start making kilograms and then tons of that material.
13:55
Speaker 1: And Hall, by the way, started the Aluminum Company of America, right,
13:59
Speaker 1: which is Alcoa, which is today steal a giant company.
14:03
Speaker 1: Like the dude who figured it out started that company
14:05
Speaker 1: is like, it's like the Edison, It's like the ge
14:08
Speaker 1: of aluminum. Right, Like a guy figured it out and
14:11
Speaker 1: started a company, and it's still a giant company exactly.
14:14
Speaker 2: And the US government was so proud of this achievement
14:20
Speaker 2: that they cast which at the time was I think
14:24
Speaker 2: the largest piece of cast aluminum, which is like three kilograms.
14:28
Speaker 2: They cast the point for the Washington Monument in Washington,
14:34
Speaker 2: d C.
14:35
Speaker 1: Because aluminum was so fine and so modern, and it
14:38
Speaker 1: was like the symbol of the age.
14:41
Speaker 2: Exactly, and it had all these unique properties that made
14:44
Speaker 2: it so valuable for just a very wide range of applications.
14:50
Speaker 1: So you start with the work in space. Then you
14:52
Speaker 1: start looking at Earth and seeing all this underutilized aluminum,
14:55
Speaker 1: which you recognize as this incredible potential source of energy.
15:02
Speaker 1: Like where does that all go? Like where do you land?
15:05
Speaker 2: So then I had to pivot a little bit and
15:07
Speaker 2: look at a problem that you know, people care more
15:11
Speaker 2: about from a financial sense, and that's just this general
15:14
Speaker 2: idea of fuel moving energy around. And it turns out
15:19
Speaker 2: aluminum is really good for that.
15:23
Speaker 1: Because it is so energy dense. Weirdly, if you can
15:27
Speaker 1: if you can figure out a relatively straightforward way of
15:30
Speaker 1: getting the energy out of aluminum when and where you
15:33
Speaker 1: want to, then suddenly aluminum itself is this incredible fuel
15:37
Speaker 1: that we just don't think of as fuel exactly.
15:39
Speaker 2: And you know, aluminum is actually the most abundant metal
15:42
Speaker 2: in the Earth's crust, so it's not something we'd run
15:44
Speaker 2: out of.
15:45
Speaker 1: So I get the idea. Right. At some point, you
15:47
Speaker 1: start a company and try and go from an idea
15:49
Speaker 1: to you know, a thing in the world, where are
15:54
Speaker 1: you now, Like what what are you doing?
15:56
Speaker 2: So like countries like Germany or Japan, you know, most
16:01
Speaker 2: of the energy that they consume is fossil based and
16:04
Speaker 2: a lot of it is imported. And so because aluminum
16:09
Speaker 2: has these properties where it's energy dense, the productions electrified,
16:12
Speaker 2: it's super abundant, it's a great candidate for replacing fossil
16:17
Speaker 2: fuels for those applications. And so that meant that we
16:21
Speaker 2: needed to get the cost down of using this process.
16:25
Speaker 2: You know, when you're essentially burning something, it needs to
16:28
Speaker 2: be quite literally dirt cheap. And you know, we were
16:32
Speaker 2: doing some interesting things with catalysts and promoters, and you know,
16:36
Speaker 2: whenever you're doing industrial chemistry, sort of the devil's in
16:39
Speaker 2: the details in terms of the cost drivers. And so
16:44
Speaker 2: that gave me this new motivation to start, you know,
16:47
Speaker 2: solving those correct problems, so to speak.
16:49
Speaker 1: And that's what correct because they're correct in terms of
16:54
Speaker 1: the market. Correct because somebody might actually pay you to
16:58
Speaker 1: do the thing at scale. That's what makes it correct.
17:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the it's usually the thing that's really hard
17:03
Speaker 2: that standing in the way of someone actually using this
17:06
Speaker 2: technology in a practical sense.
17:08
Speaker 1: And in this instance, what is the thing that's really
17:12
Speaker 1: hard that's standing in the way of someone using this technology.
17:15
Speaker 2: It's always cost at the end of the day.
17:17
Speaker 1: Technoeconomics, right, that term talking to sort of energy transition
17:23
Speaker 1: people like technoeconomics is fundamentally what the energy transition is about. Right,
17:29
Speaker 1: exactly where where are you now? What like specifically, do
17:35
Speaker 1: you have a sort of first use case in mind?
17:37
Speaker 2: Our first you know, beach head market so to speak,
17:41
Speaker 2: is actually in the aluminum industry. It's a way of
17:44
Speaker 2: enabling circularity within the illumin industry to solve this issue
17:48
Speaker 2: that aluminum waste is not always efficiently handled. So what
17:52
Speaker 2: we can do is we can take aluminum waste. We
17:55
Speaker 2: can extract that energy to decarbonize some of the last
18:00
Speaker 2: remaining truly fossil based processes in the illuminum industry.
18:05
Speaker 1: So, just to be clear, this initial use you're using
18:07
Speaker 1: the ideas to use scrap a loluminium as a source
18:10
Speaker 1: of energy that will be used in making new.
18:13
Speaker 2: Aluminium exactly, or just in making aluminum oxide, which can
18:18
Speaker 2: also go and turn into other products as well.
18:21
Speaker 1: So okay, So that is a weird clever place to start.
18:27
Speaker 1: Are you actually doing that? Yeah?
18:29
Speaker 2: So today we're doing it on a small scale, but
18:31
Speaker 2: it is it's definitely at a subscale. So you know,
18:34
Speaker 2: to give you a sense, these plants are producing aluminum
18:39
Speaker 2: on such a scale that they need megawatts of thermal power,
18:43
Speaker 2: we're still at killowat scale. We're maybe twenty to fifty
18:47
Speaker 2: x away from really getting started in a meaningful way.
18:51
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the first one. Like what's the like
18:55
Speaker 1: less niche one. That's a little bit farther.
18:57
Speaker 2: Out right, So what's interesting, like on our global scales,
19:01
Speaker 2: if we look at today's aluminum supply chain, because it
19:04
Speaker 2: is their energy intensive to make, it's essentially an energy
19:08
Speaker 2: supply chain. So we can look at at where what
19:12
Speaker 2: countries are connected by these aluminum flows and and see
19:16
Speaker 2: that oh, actually, you know, you could you can essentially
19:18
Speaker 2: just expand this and then use it directly as an
19:21
Speaker 2: energy flow in addition to just a material flow.
19:23
Speaker 1: Right, So if you're if you're making aluminum in Iceland
19:27
Speaker 1: and sending it to Germany, you're functionally sending energy from
19:32
Speaker 1: the whatever geothermal vents in Iceland to Germany. You just
19:36
Speaker 1: don't know it because you think you're sending aluminum cans.
19:38
Speaker 1: Is that what you mean?
19:39
Speaker 2: Yes, although in Iceland right they're using more hydro to
19:44
Speaker 2: make the their aluminum, but similar ideas. So you know,
19:47
Speaker 2: it's actually this closed loop process where you you essentially
19:50
Speaker 2: recharge your aluminum oxide in a place like Iceland, you
19:54
Speaker 2: then ship just that metal in these big billets to Germany.
19:59
Speaker 2: You use our process to turn that into heat, uh,
20:03
Speaker 2: and then you send that aluminum oxide essentially back on
20:06
Speaker 2: the same boat maybe that that brought to in the
20:09
Speaker 2: first place. You and you repeat the process. We're actually
20:13
Speaker 2: calling it the world's first rechargeable fuel.
20:16
Speaker 1: So you get so let's just talk through both how
20:18
Speaker 1: you sort of recharge it, which is basically how you
20:20
Speaker 1: make aluminum, and then how you get the the heat
20:23
Speaker 1: out of it, right, how you get the energy out
20:24
Speaker 1: of it. So just the basic like how you make aluminum,
20:28
Speaker 1: you get box side out of the ground. What do
20:30
Speaker 1: you do to make aluminum?
20:32
Speaker 2: So you know, starting from box site, you heat it up.
20:37
Speaker 2: You need to produce aluminum hydroxide, and then you bake
20:41
Speaker 2: that and you drive off the water molecules and then
20:44
Speaker 2: you're left with a particular grade of aluminum oxide that
20:48
Speaker 2: then goes into your hall Hero process where they electrochemically
20:54
Speaker 2: split the aluminum and the oxygen, and then you're just
20:57
Speaker 2: left with that metallic aluminum.
21:00
Speaker 1: Okay, just pure elemental aluminum yep. Okay, So now it
21:04
Speaker 1: comes to you what do you do with it?
21:08
Speaker 2: So it's proprietary, but it's a it's a surface treatment
21:11
Speaker 2: to to the aluminum that that causes the aluminum to
21:16
Speaker 2: break down along the micro structure when it's exposed to water.
21:22
Speaker 1: Okay. And then so once you've applied your secret sauce
21:27
Speaker 1: to the aluminum, what happens in this universe where you're
21:30
Speaker 1: using it as a fuel source? Like what what happened?
21:33
Speaker 2: So then you know, then you just have sort of
21:35
Speaker 2: this general purpose fuel which you can use to replace
21:39
Speaker 2: fossil fuels for all sorts of applications. Like I was
21:41
Speaker 2: saying earlier, you split water when you let aluminum rusk,
21:45
Speaker 2: and so then you have the rest of that energy
21:48
Speaker 2: in the hydrogen. You can then just burn that hydrogen
21:52
Speaker 2: and then that will just produce heat at you know,
21:55
Speaker 2: way above a thousand degrees celsius. And you know, starting
22:00
Speaker 2: with those high temperatures, that gives you a lot of
22:01
Speaker 2: flexibility to produce steam that can run turbomachinery, but can
22:07
Speaker 2: also replace fossil fuel for a lot of really high
22:10
Speaker 2: temperature applications a.
22:12
Speaker 1: Hard problem, right, Like steel people talk about sort of
22:15
Speaker 1: decarbonizing steel and these sort of industrial processes that need
22:18
Speaker 1: really high temperatures is a particularly hard problem that you
22:21
Speaker 1: can't do with sort of standard and so this could
22:23
Speaker 1: do that exactly.
22:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're just talking high temperature heat and you know,
22:29
Speaker 2: any any process that requires that would be a good candidate.
22:33
Speaker 1: Like you want it at a steel plant in Germany
22:35
Speaker 1: or something. You want it at a at a place
22:37
Speaker 1: where they need a lot of heat and are importing
22:39
Speaker 1: fossil fuels to get it, right now, Like that's the
22:42
Speaker 1: sort of obvious use case.
22:43
Speaker 2: We're using like local coal or you know. But yeah, exactly,
22:47
Speaker 2: that's exactly right.
22:51
Speaker 1: In a minute, why Peter's plan might not work. So
23:06
Speaker 1: when you have you know, your first reactors out in
23:08
Speaker 1: the real world doing real work, Like just help me
23:12
Speaker 1: picture it, Like what is your first reactor out in
23:14
Speaker 1: the world. What's it going to look like?
23:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, so for the first you know, megawatt scale systems,
23:18
Speaker 2: we're talking like a four foot by four foot by
23:21
Speaker 2: four foot cube.
23:22
Speaker 1: Okay, so so so quite small. That's the size of
23:25
Speaker 1: the box. And then dumb question, is there like somebody
23:28
Speaker 1: like putting just like scrap aluminum into the box, Like
23:33
Speaker 1: is it like a guy shoveling coal on the railroad
23:35
Speaker 1: two hundred years ago? Like what's going on?
23:38
Speaker 2: It's not unlike that. Okay, let me let me put
23:40
Speaker 2: it that way. And so there's there's conveyor belts and
23:44
Speaker 2: sort of shredders and you know, the basically all the
23:46
Speaker 2: standard equipment you would have in the in the waste
23:49
Speaker 2: processing industry. And then they'll get to a form factor
23:53
Speaker 2: the basically these pellets that then get automatically fed into
23:57
Speaker 2: the box.
23:58
Speaker 1: What happens inside the box.
24:00
Speaker 2: So this is where a lot of interesting stuff happens.
24:02
Speaker 2: This is where we actually are facilitating an aluminum water
24:07
Speaker 2: chemical reaction. And so you're getting these big pieces of
24:11
Speaker 2: aluminum that are going in that illuminum is getting broken
24:13
Speaker 2: down at the microstructure by our activator compound and then
24:19
Speaker 2: it's interacting with water. So you can imagine it's just
24:23
Speaker 2: in its simplest form, it's just essentially a vessel where
24:29
Speaker 2: you're mixing all these things together. But easier said than done.
24:33
Speaker 1: Okay, and then what comes out of the box.
24:37
Speaker 2: So the box will fundamentally have two to three outputs.
24:42
Speaker 2: So the first two are the sort of the energy
24:47
Speaker 2: the power outputs, and so depending on the customer, you know,
24:50
Speaker 2: we're able to provide energy as heat or hydrogen gas
24:54
Speaker 2: which can then be burned or some combination. And so
24:57
Speaker 2: depending on that application, you basically have a pipe that
25:00
Speaker 2: comes out that has this energy containing gas.
25:05
Speaker 1: Hot air, hydrogen gas, whatever they want exactly.
25:08
Speaker 2: And then the other is this refined aluminum hydroxide, which
25:13
Speaker 2: again you know, these companies that make aluminum or use
25:16
Speaker 2: aluminum at some point in the value stream, you know,
25:20
Speaker 2: upstream of that they are sourcing this material, and so
25:24
Speaker 2: this actually saves them having to go in mine additional
25:27
Speaker 2: box side. So if you if you look at this
25:29
Speaker 2: whole process through the lens of making aluminum oxide, it's
25:33
Speaker 2: actually carbon negative. So you're getting this essentially the only
25:36
Speaker 2: carbon free source of aluminum hydroxide there is in the world.
25:41
Speaker 2: There's no other way to make this.
25:42
Speaker 1: Why might it not work?
25:46
Speaker 2: So, you know, we have very high confidence in our
25:49
Speaker 2: go to market strategy, which is using aluminum waste to decarbonize.
25:55
Speaker 2: You know, these very specific industries, but at some point
25:58
Speaker 2: you do run out of aluminum waste.
26:00
Speaker 1: You know. Well wait, so you're just stipulating that the
26:03
Speaker 1: aluminum waste part will work at scale and the technoeconomics
26:07
Speaker 1: will work. Like, might that part not work there?
26:11
Speaker 2: Well, it's so cheap you have a huge buffer for
26:14
Speaker 2: it to work even poorly, and it still makes sense.
26:17
Speaker 1: Huh. Say more about that?
26:20
Speaker 2: You know, like we're talking like really bottom bottom of
26:23
Speaker 2: the barrel aluminum waste. So this is stuff that in
26:27
Speaker 2: some cases companies are actually paying other peoples to take
26:30
Speaker 2: away because it's too contaminated.
26:33
Speaker 1: And so can you use that that absolutely garbage aluminum,
26:38
Speaker 1: Like you can use whatever crappy recycled aluminium that's a
26:42
Speaker 1: mess and that nobody wants. You can use that efficiently
26:45
Speaker 1: and and it works for you. Yep, yep.
26:49
Speaker 2: We're just our process eats aluminum and leaves everything else
26:52
Speaker 2: pretty much untouched.
26:55
Speaker 1: And is that the aluminum you're using now?
26:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're we're we're looking at those you know,
27:01
Speaker 2: low quality feestock, and it's a lot like food and
27:04
Speaker 2: beverage packaging and stuff that's that's contaminated or maybe it's
27:08
Speaker 2: like mixed with other metals or plastics or organic contamination.
27:13
Speaker 1: It's what I put out on the curb every week,
27:15
Speaker 1: and I think there's no way that can actually be useful.
27:17
Speaker 1: They are probably just putting it in the garbage. You're saying,
27:20
Speaker 1: that's what you can use exactly. Yeah, and how big
27:23
Speaker 1: is that? I mean, that's if that works, that's a lot, right, Like,
27:27
Speaker 1: if you're just taking it as given that that's going
27:29
Speaker 1: to work, that's a lot of success. If that works, right,
27:32
Speaker 1: presumably that's a very large market for inputs for you. No, totally.
27:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's a large market, but given
27:40
Speaker 2: the scale of the you know, emissions globally, you know,
27:46
Speaker 2: it's not really going to put a dent in that.
27:48
Speaker 2: It's you know, it's it's probably a good outcome for
27:50
Speaker 2: our company and for definitely our customers for using this technology,
27:54
Speaker 2: but it's not the impact that I'm interested in specifically.
27:57
Speaker 1: Like, it's not going to reduce the average temperature of
27:59
Speaker 1: the Earth in one hundred years.
28:01
Speaker 2: No, you know, it's going to have more positive impacts
28:03
Speaker 2: than just carbon emissions reductions because you're also cleaning up
28:07
Speaker 2: the mining industry around aluminium oxide production.
28:11
Speaker 1: So this sort of recycled aluminum that nobody else wants,
28:16
Speaker 1: is enough to supply the energy for this one piece
28:21
Speaker 1: of the production of new aluminum? Is that I mean?
28:24
Speaker 1: Is that basically what you're saying? Yep, exactly, But then
28:26
Speaker 1: we have the whole rest of the world to worry
28:27
Speaker 1: about exactly. Okay, so tell me about the whole rest
28:31
Speaker 1: of the world. So, once you're using all the crappy
28:35
Speaker 1: recycled aluminum that nobody else wants and decarbonizing this piece
28:38
Speaker 1: of the process of making new aluminum, what's the what's
28:43
Speaker 1: the next move?
28:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the next move is to close the loop,
28:47
Speaker 2: as we like to say. So that's actually recharging the
28:51
Speaker 2: byproduct of our own reaction, doing that in a place
28:56
Speaker 2: where you have abundant renewables, and then sending it to
28:59
Speaker 2: a place where you do not have abundant renewables. And
29:02
Speaker 2: at that scale, then you know there's no constraint on
29:06
Speaker 2: the amount of aluminum that we have access to it.
29:09
Speaker 2: It's literally the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust.
29:12
Speaker 1: So in that universe you were, it's sort of end
29:15
Speaker 1: to end. You're just in some clean way that doesn't
29:18
Speaker 1: entirely exist yet. Turning box site into pure aluminum, which
29:23
Speaker 1: then is your fuel, and you're sending it to wherever
29:25
Speaker 1: they need it, and you're turning that aluminum into heat,
29:28
Speaker 1: and then you're the product of that reaction. Is what
29:32
Speaker 1: aluminum oxide that you're sending back to your clean plant
29:36
Speaker 1: and turning it back into pure aluminum and just going
29:38
Speaker 1: back and forth like that. That's the dream exactly, yep.
29:41
Speaker 1: And on the technoeconomic side, maybe somebody will come up
29:44
Speaker 1: with something cheaper or easier or something, right. I mean,
29:47
Speaker 1: you're not just competing against what exists today. You're competing
29:51
Speaker 1: against all these other smart people who are trying ultimately
29:54
Speaker 1: to solve the same problem you're trying to solve, but
29:55
Speaker 1: in different ways. Right.
29:56
Speaker 2: You know, we're not necessarily too worried about that. In
29:59
Speaker 2: some ways, we will need multiple solutions, so you need
30:02
Speaker 2: to get like maybe ten kilograms of aluminum reacting at once.
30:05
Speaker 2: Easier said than done. But you're not talking massive systems,
30:09
Speaker 2: and what that means is you can modularize, so you
30:12
Speaker 2: can start rolling this out. So we really only have
30:14
Speaker 2: to do a fifty x scale up really well, and
30:18
Speaker 2: then we can mass produce what we call our aluminum
30:21
Speaker 2: water reactors.
30:23
Speaker 1: So it doesn't have to be that big. You just
30:25
Speaker 1: get a kind of little reactor and then you put
30:27
Speaker 1: twenty of them right next to each other. Is that
30:29
Speaker 1: what exactly?
30:30
Speaker 2: Exactly, so you don't take on that scale risk all
30:34
Speaker 2: at once. So that's you know, you know again like
30:37
Speaker 2: scaling up fifty x is also a major challenge.
30:40
Speaker 1: And non trivial.
30:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, we we have a big team
30:45
Speaker 2: of really smart people working on it. But you know what,
30:49
Speaker 2: you think, thinking long term, there's there's kind of a
30:52
Speaker 2: timing risk, I would say, where as we scale these technologies,
30:58
Speaker 2: you know, we need people to be ready to use them.
31:02
Speaker 2: And while you know this early, these early adopters in
31:07
Speaker 2: the aluminum industry, they're ready to use this tech now roughly,
31:11
Speaker 2: you know, as we go to decarbonized industrial heat more broadly,
31:15
Speaker 2: you know, they may not be ready to commit to
31:18
Speaker 2: a new technology, unproven technology with you know, supply chain
31:21
Speaker 2: risk and basically the things that are standing in the
31:24
Speaker 2: way of them moving to any other technology.
31:27
Speaker 1: Well, and they are industries that operate at massive scale, right,
31:31
Speaker 1: and you're like kind of doing this little thing and
31:34
Speaker 1: trying to scale it up, and it seems it seems
31:37
Speaker 1: like there's like a chasm you have to leap in
31:40
Speaker 1: some way to get from where you are to like,
31:44
Speaker 1: you know, decarbonizing a steel plant or something.
31:47
Speaker 2: And you know, we're hedging that risk by not starting
31:49
Speaker 2: there and starting with the folks that have a reasonably
31:54
Speaker 2: high adoption readiness level that is commensurate with our technology
31:58
Speaker 2: readiness level.
31:59
Speaker 1: So I don't want to end the main part of
32:02
Speaker 1: the interview on the like why it might not work
32:04
Speaker 1: as as kind of a tenuated bomber. So like when
32:08
Speaker 1: you think happy thoughts about the world ten years from now,
32:13
Speaker 1: well like what does it look like and what is
32:14
Speaker 1: your place in it?
32:15
Speaker 2: Lookally, you know, you look at replacing the fossil fuel
32:20
Speaker 2: supply chain, which has been developed and optimized and obsessed
32:24
Speaker 2: over for you know, basically one hundred years and more.
32:30
Speaker 2: You know, you can't just replace all of that with
32:33
Speaker 2: one thing. This is a sort of everyone problem. And
32:38
Speaker 2: and yeah, you know we I love looking at this.
32:41
Speaker 2: If you google aluminum supply chain, probably a map comes
32:45
Speaker 2: up showing these these lines going from places today with
32:49
Speaker 2: lots of renewables, and you know, I want to see
32:51
Speaker 2: that turned into the next energy supply chain. That's that's
32:54
Speaker 2: what excites me.
32:59
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning ground Okay,
33:10
Speaker 1: I want to finish with the lightning round it right
33:14
Speaker 1: that you sort of remote control drove the Curiosity rover
33:18
Speaker 1: on Mars. Yes, not just me.
33:21
Speaker 2: I was on the team that did operations for Curiosity,
33:24
Speaker 2: and I was working on the arms specifically. It takes
33:27
Speaker 2: about one hundred people every single day to operate this thing.
33:31
Speaker 1: Oh so you like made the arm move and pick
33:34
Speaker 1: things up.
33:35
Speaker 2: A part of the team that did that. But yeah,
33:37
Speaker 2: pretty much.
33:39
Speaker 1: What's your favorite part of Mars.
33:42
Speaker 2: Well, there's really only one interesting part of ours, in
33:44
Speaker 2: my opinion, which is the mountain.
33:48
Speaker 1: Is there one mountain? It's not a mountain on Mars.
33:51
Speaker 1: It's the mountain on Mars.
33:52
Speaker 2: It's it's like a bulge in the planet that you know,
33:56
Speaker 2: you could call a mountain. But so if we agree
33:59
Speaker 2: that that's a mountain, it's actually the largest mountain in
34:02
Speaker 2: the Solar System.
34:03
Speaker 1: What's interesting too about it.
34:05
Speaker 2: The thing that was cool is that you can basically,
34:07
Speaker 2: as you drive up sort of get a hiss a
34:09
Speaker 2: geological history of Mars as you sample different rocks, and
34:14
Speaker 2: you know, Curiosity was basically just driving up this thing
34:17
Speaker 2: until it dies.
34:19
Speaker 1: Huh, what's your second favorite metal?
34:26
Speaker 2: Probably I would have to say iron, you know, just
34:29
Speaker 2: from from its importance.
34:33
Speaker 1: There's a whole age. Yeah, I actually talked to you
34:37
Speaker 1: probably cross paths with Mateo Hotamo form energy. Right. He
34:40
Speaker 1: is using iron to make batteries, and it's, you know,
34:44
Speaker 1: in a way somewhat analogous to what you're doing, right,
34:47
Speaker 1: Like their batteries are essentially iron that is rusting and
34:51
Speaker 1: unrusting in the way that you're rusting and unrusting aluminum.
34:54
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, exactly, and you know they're using a cheaper material,
34:58
Speaker 2: but it's it's also less energy dense, so it's really.
35:01
Speaker 1: Wildly less right, Like their play is like we don't
35:03
Speaker 1: care about energy debt. They can be gigantic out of
35:06
Speaker 1: the desert.
35:07
Speaker 2: They're just going for costs and so it's it's amazing
35:08
Speaker 2: for first stationary energy.
35:10
Speaker 1: I think what they're doing is school. I mean it's complementary, right,
35:14
Speaker 1: Like they are not going to generate heat to power
35:16
Speaker 1: a steel mill and you're not going to be doing
35:19
Speaker 1: energy storage at utility scale, right.
35:21
Speaker 2: So yeah, and actually you know, we it's very complementary
35:24
Speaker 2: in that in order to do truly carbon free aluminum
35:28
Speaker 2: smelting with renewables like solar and wind, you need to
35:31
Speaker 2: solve the intermittency issue because these pol hero cells run
35:34
Speaker 2: really hot, so you know, solar wind plus like a
35:38
Speaker 2: form energy a facility could could be an interesting way
35:42
Speaker 2: to enable more aluminum production.
35:45
Speaker 1: Is there some engineer, either living or from history, who
35:48
Speaker 1: you think everybody should know about?
35:50
Speaker 2: I would say I would say people these days don't
35:53
Speaker 2: give enough credit to the engineers from the Apollo era
35:58
Speaker 2: of NASA, where you know, we're like obsessing over going
36:01
Speaker 2: back to the Moon and like, you know, we think
36:03
Speaker 2: what we're doing now is impressive, like you know, sending
36:06
Speaker 2: people into space like what we were doing back then
36:09
Speaker 2: with the tools that they had.
36:12
Speaker 1: They did it basically on an iPhone right yeah wait
36:16
Speaker 1: wait less yeah exactly.
36:17
Speaker 2: I just I just think that's insane and that and
36:19
Speaker 2: that it worked. Uh, you know we got people back
36:23
Speaker 2: from the Moon.
36:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, getting them there was the easy part. Getting them
36:26
Speaker 1: back was hard.
36:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
36:30
Speaker 1: Peter Goddard is the co founder and CEO of Found Energy.
36:35
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was
36:38
Speaker 1: edited by Lyddy Jean Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguer.
36:42
Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
36:46
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
36:48
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.