Quino Energy Announces 100kWh Pilot and Plans for Global Expansion
June 20 2024 - 4:00AM
Quino Energy Announces 100kWh Pilot and Plans for Global
Expansion
Today, Quino Energy, a company developing water-based organic flow
batteries originally invented at Harvard University, announced its
10 kW / 100 kWh prototype is now operational, using material
produced using its zero-waste, continuous flow production process
that achieved Manufacturing Readiness Level 7 (MRL) earlier this
year. The Company also shared plans to expand its production
footprint into the European Union and prioritize field pilot
development and commercial sales on a global scale.
This milestone adds to the company's recent successes with a 6
kW / 24 kWh pilot system and two other 1.5 kW / 6 kWh systems
currently operating at its facility. With these pilot systems,
Quino Energy has demonstrated its chemistry working in full systems
– originally designed for vanadium but adapted for use by Quino
Energy with minimal modifications – made by two separate flow
battery OEMs. Notably, all four lab pilot systems use the same
full-size stacks found in megawatt-scale systems and active
material made in Buffalo, NY by Electrosynthesis Company, Quino
Energy’s Department of Energy (DOE) project partner. As part of the
DOE project, Quino Energy will send one of its lab pilots to the
Grid Storage Launchpad at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at
the end of the year for external validation.
Quino’s production process, which has now achieved ton-scale
production, represents the first real example of U.S. domestic
manufacturing of flow battery active material, and is a testament
to how easily Quino Energy’s innovative zero-waste production
process can be scaled up to achieve lower costs. With the average
household in America using approximately 29 kWh of electricity per
day, Quino’s 100 kWh pilot can supply a home’s entire electricity
needs for more than three whole days or three homes for one day.
This is an energy storage capacity roughly equivalent to more than
seven fully-charged Tesla Powerwalls combined.
“I continue to be amazed at the rapid progress that Quino Energy
has made on scaling up their innovative zero-waste process for
manufacturing organic flow battery electrolytes. With their
low-cost, high-performance quinone chemistry, and general backward
compatibility with vanadium flow battery hardware, Quino Energy's
technology enables quick acceleration of time-to-market and scale
up,” said Changwon Suh, Technology Manager at the Department of
Energy’s Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office
(DOE AMMTO). “This next generation storage technology reduces
manufacturing costs and eliminates the need to use critical
materials, supporting greater commercial acceptance and innovative
applied RD&D. Quino’s organic flow battery electrolytes serve
as an example of DOE AMMTO’s vision of bridging the gap between
academic discovery and commercialization through collaborative
RD&D and use of innovative materials and manufacturing that
supports a clean, decarbonized economy.”
Masahiro Sameshima, General Partner at ANRI and Quino Energy’s
seed stage lead investor added, “We have been supporting Quino
Energy as investors since the seed stage, and we are amazed by the
incredible research and development speed driven by the strong
leadership of Eugene Beh and the management team. The recent
achievement of scaling up from the previously accomplished 6 kW /
24 kWh pilot system to the new 10 kW / 100 kWh prototype marks a
significant milestone. As the demand for flow batteries is expected
to grow, we expect that Quino Energy's cheap and sustainable
solutions will address the existing challenges of flow batteries
and contribute to the realization of a decarbonized society.”
“We recently achieved an annual degradation rate more than 10
times lower than equivalent LFP batteries with more than six months
of continuous cycling on a single cell, and reached six months of
cumulative cycling among our full-scale lab pilots,” said Eugene
Beh, co-founder and CEO of Quino Energy. “Coupled with our active
production line in the U.S. for our quinone electrolyte and one
more planned for the EU, our organic flow battery technology is
derisked and ready for a new phase of growth focused on MWh-scale
deployments and commercial sales of electrolytes. Our vision is for
quinones to replace vanadium as the dominant flow battery chemistry
and eventually become the leading battery chemistry for
mid-duration energy storage. To get there, we will work with other
OEMs to build on the good work they have done on building systems
for vanadium, and focus on delivering safe, non-flammable energy
storage to customers. Longer-term, we aim to take flow batteries to
a whole new cost paradigm to go toe-to-toe with lithium-ion
batteries.”
On Wednesday June 26, Beh will be speaking at the International
Flow Battery Forum (IFBF) in Glasgow, UK to share and discuss Quino
Energy’s rapid progress.
About Quino EnergyFormed in 2021, Quino Energy
is a start-up company that is developing water-based flow batteries
that store electrical energy in organic molecules called quinones,
for commercial and grid applications. These batteries are predicted
to enjoy a unique combination of low capital cost, true fire
safety, rapid scalability, and local manufacturability. This is
made possible by a number of technological breakthroughs, some of
which were first discovered at Harvard University and later
licensed by Quino Energy. Please visit quinoenergy.com for more
details on the team and the technology.
Media inquiries:quino@fischtankpr.com