Element 16 Technologies

Element 16 Technologies develops high-temperature thermal energy storage — described by the company as a thermal battery — intended to capture and store heat for later use in industrial process steam and flexible power generation. The underlying sulfur thermal energy storage technology originated in research at UCLA, where co-founder Richard Wirz, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and director of UCLA's Energy Innovation Laboratory, invented the technology and where founder and CEO Parker Wells worked on the original research team as a graduate student. The company positions the system as a low-cost, compact, high-temperature design for two main applications: cogeneration (combined heat and power) plants, where stored heat allows electricity and steam production to be decoupled in time and provides backup steam during outages, and industrial facilities with heavy process-heat demand, where captured excess heat displaces natural gas purchases and associated greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the company, its first installation is a 100-plus ton thermal energy storage system supplying process steam to a mineral producing facility, which it expects to save the facility tens of thousands of dollars in annual natural gas costs while reducing water usage through lower waste steam and adding redundancy to the plant. The company also describes thermal storage as a buffer that smooths intermittent thermal loads and reduces thermal shock to equipment.

The company lists a small leadership group of engineers and PhDs: Parker Wells (CEO), Hamarz Aryafar (CTO), a former Cal Poly Pomona professor and UCLA postdoctoral scholar who led a DOE ARPA-E-backed thermochemical hydrogen energy storage demonstration, and Richard Wirz (co-founder, scientific advisor), whose continuing research addresses system lifetime, alternative chemistries including sulfur-doping, and high-temperature testing.

Founding story

Element 16 was founded in April 2016 to commercialize sulfur thermal energy storage developed at UCLA. Richard Wirz, a UCLA associate professor and director of the university's Energy Innovation Laboratory, is the original inventor of the technology on which the product is based; Parker Wells was a member of the original UCLA research team as a graduate student and is an inventor on sulfur energy storage patent applications. In its first year the company was featured among student cleantech startups in Caltech's FLoW showcase (May 2016) and received a NASA-reported Transformational Idea Award (June 2016).

Business model

Element 16 supplies thermal energy storage systems to industrial and power generation facilities, deploying installed heat storage equipment that captures excess heat and discharges it as process steam or for power plant flexibility. Development to date has been substantially supported by public grants and prizes from the California Energy Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation i-Corps program.

Traction

The company reports a first installation of a 100-plus ton thermal energy storage system producing process steam at a mineral producing facility, expected to save tens of thousands of dollars in annual natural gas costs. It has won multiple competitive public awards, including California Energy Commission grants, DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office and Solar Desalination Prize awards, and an NSF i-Corps grant, and has completed several accelerator programs.

Latest developments

In June 2022 the company announced million-dollar funding for a California Energy Commission project. Preceding milestones included the October 2021 start of a $1.4M DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office project and a December 2021 partnership with AGM Communication on a new international project.