SAN LEANDRO, Calif., June 20, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 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 Energy
Formed 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.
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