The solar tech company, Impacts Renewable Energy, is heating up Australia’s industry.
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We all know the sting of hot water from a garden hose on a summer’s day – but Trevor Powell, CEO and founder of Impacts Renewable Energy, saw more than an inconvenience. He saw potential. If the sun could heat water to scalding temperatures in the backyard, why couldn’t that same heat power industrial processes?
Electricity is not the only form of energy in need of sustainable alternatives. “Industrial heat consumes 25% of the world’s energy, and accounts for 20% of emissions. It’s insane.” Powell explains.
Heat is critical for food production, sterilisation, manufacturing, and mining.
Yet, 90% of this remains the product of fossil fuel combustion. Australia must import 30 million tonnes of diesel annually to produce industrial heat; a situation Powell calls an “extreme supply chain vulnerability, [with] only two weeks of national supply” held in reserve.
The way forward?
According to Powell, it’s Perflection, Impacts’ patented Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) technology. The Impacts website explains how Perflection “incorporates a series of small … mirror facets in a compact, planar format, that focuses reflected sunlight onto a central receiver tube”.
Powell details how this “ridiculously simple” design relies on the University of South Australia’s coating technology, applied to the surface of a plastic 1mm thick to produce a highly reflective surface. This innovation allows Perflection to be pre-assembled, lightweight, and only the size of a bedroom door.
Impacts has differentiated itself from conventional CST, which Powell says relies on “very, very large, curved glass mirrors, four or five, six meters across”. Perflection requires 75% less land for the same output as these traditional Photovoltaic Technologies (PV) with thermal efficiency five times higher.
Chief Marketing Officer Peter Blackmore says temperatures of up to 400°C can be reached, at “40 to 70% less than the cost of existing non-renewable fuels”.
There is also little price volatility, as is often the case with the fossil fuel market. One caveat is that Perflection cannot address the most high-end heat demands, but with “75% of all industries, including the steel industry, working at 300°C or less” according to Blackmore, he is certain this will not be a major issue.
Although you can’t connect heat-energy to the grid, it can be stored cheaply, says Blackmore. He reinforced that Impacts’ ‘Thermal Matrix’ storage allows heat to be available “24 hours a day, at a fraction of the cost of electrical batteries”.
So, what does this look like in reality?
Blackmore illustrates a use case for Australian wineries. “Typically, the way [wine vats are] cleaned is with caustic chemicals – you clean them out and then neutralise that with acid.” However, using heat from Perflection, steam can be used to clean the vats instead “without having to wear PPE, without a chemical cost, and contaminating water”.
Impacts has established this winery setup as a “real world showroom that’s working, not just sitting there looking pretty”, he says.
Impacts’ technology has broad applications. Powell hopes to expand into large-scale agricultural and industrial processes, including: process heat and steam; water pumping; water supply; irrigation; mine de-watering; desalination; chilling; and solar-enhanced biomass waste to energy.
Powell believes “Industry is excited about what we’re bringing to the table, because they are like the rest of society, ready to de-carbonise”.
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