Tech Outlook with Tom Chepucavage, the co-founder and CEO of Flow Aluminum.

Rethinking batteries.

That’s the concept behind Flow Aluminum, an Albuquerque company that is working to scale up aluminum-based batteries, instead of the more traditional lithium batteries.

The guest on episode 16 of Tech Outlook is Tom Chepucavage, the co-founder and CEO of Flow Aluminum.

The company is only one year old and Chepucavage shared insights on the company’s technology and where he hopes to take the business in the next year.

Here’s a sample of the conversation, which has been lightly edited.

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To start, can you introduce yourself?

So I started my career in management consulting. I worked in the utilities industry and for (Public Service Company of New Mexico) and for Rinchem, which works with the high purity and chemical and gas supply chain for Intel and other semiconductor companies. So along with this, (the University of New Mexico) requested that I mentor their program for tech transfer, for commercializing intellectual property. And so when they introduced me to this team, Dr. (Shuya) Wei and Chris Fetro, with this battery and direct air capture technology. It fit right into my career. I really care about the environment. I’ve got a daughter and I want her to have the opportunities to enjoy this Earth the way I have.

Can you tell us a little bit about your company?

“We are researching and developing an aluminum CO2 battery that also functions as a direct air capture, sequestering carbon, and that’s in the grid format. So this battery uses no rare earth minerals, no lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese or graphite. It’s an aluminum anode, carbon cathode, and a chemistry in the electrolyte that is very efficient, very high-energy density. And so this battery can be used in multiple applications. It can be used in consumer electronics. It can be used in electric vehicles or grid storage, residential storage, aerospace, aviation. Our focus, though, is grid storage, because in that application, as a flow battery, we can actually concentrate carbon and capture it. So it actually is a dual product. Some people talk about the cost of direct air capture, and that the government is really funding this. There’s a lot of questions about that. With our product, you buy a battery, and as a side effect, you get a direct air capture. So in effect, we’re really just taking that challenge of the cost and we’ve just really addressed it, and it’s really impressive.

What’s interesting about aluminum?

Aluminum, as a metal, has a very high potential for energy.The energy density, and what it can do with storing energy in a battery format, it has properties that are very high energy density.

What do these batteries look like? Are they massive or are they small?

So right now, we’ve got coin cells, and they’re the size of a quarter and look like a watch battery. And then it scales up to the grid storage, ... half the full size of a C container, 40 feet long. So they could be massive or very small.

Are there certain products that they work in?

The same as if you went into a grocery store and bought a coin cell. They could work in any medical device, any consumer electronics, (internet of things), fitness device, on up to (electric vehicles) and grids. So there’s no limitations.

Are you getting new customers, everyday people who want a more environmentally friendly battery?

I forgot to mention the battery’s not flammable, which is a massive advantage. And people, they hear that, and they want to adopt it. I was just in New York, and they’ve struggled with their (electric) bikes with the fires. ... It’s just the interest is really just about educating the public, because no one’s ever heard of an aluminum battery, but it really has all the advantages over a lithium battery.

Talk to us about the electric grid. What are the problems that your company is trying to solve?

Storage wise, the current lithium short duration batteries that last about three hours to C container-size lithium batteries, they’re flammable. ... So that’s a huge problem. Another problem is performance in extreme temperatures. In the Southwest, we have the heat, the batteries degrade. Ours do not. The Flow Aluminum battery does not at hot or cold temperatures. We’re testing down a negative 40 (degrees Celsius) and NASA is actually working with us to see if we can get to negative 60 Celsius. So this opens up markets. It’s a huge advantage over the current batteries. We can also be long duration, which is where the battery storage industry is going.

You talked about carbon capture. What does that mean?

We can actually pull carbon out of the air. Carbon is this problem contributing to climate change. And we can actually, the battery, as it discharges, concentrates carbon out of the ambient air, or a pure CO2 source that came out of a factory, and it creates an oxalate that we can trap and bury, or we’re using them in other industries now that have a carbon output, creating cement or other things. It’s one of the biggest challenges in addressing climate change: Getting carbon out of the air. Because it’s a leading contributor to global warming.

You’ve said you care about the environment. Where does that motivation come from?

I moved out here 22 years ago. We’ve seen the West be stricken with the fires. Obviously, New Mexico was hit with a terrible fire recently. Climate change, it’s global warming, the climate shift. We’re going to struggle with water in New Mexico anyway. These energy sources are the driver of climate change, and we have to address that. We talk about artificial intelligence, that’s going to suck so much energy. There’s going to be increasing demand for solutions for generation and storage. We can meet that, and we can capture carbon. So we can not only address this problem that’s escalating moving forward, of providing energy, but actually addressing what’s happened in the last century with carbon released into the atmosphere.