Speaker 1: Pushkin. Out of everything we cover on this show, out
Speaker 1: of all the themes I do, I have to admit
Speaker 1: have a favorite. My favorite theme. My favorite thing we
Speaker 1: cover is the energy transition. There are a bunch of
Speaker 1: reasons I love the energy transition shows. One reason the
Speaker 1: giant obvious global stakes right fighting climate change to the
Speaker 1: people working on the energy transition. The people I talk
Speaker 1: to in these shows actually make me feel hope rather
Speaker 1: than despair. It's a big one and three. Reason number three,
Speaker 1: which is related to reason number two, is there is
Speaker 1: just so much creativity in this field, in this set
Speaker 1: of industries. There's so much of people looking at the
Speaker 1: world and trying to think at a really basic, fundamental,
Speaker 1: kind of first principles level, how can we solve these
Speaker 1: giant problems? How can we get the carbon free energy
Speaker 1: we need at a price we can afford. I'm Jacob
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
Speaker 1: I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Peter Goddard. He's the co founder
Speaker 1: and CEO of Found Energy. Found Energy is in its
Speaker 1: early stages, but the fundamental idea behind the company is
Speaker 1: so creative and audacious and frankly so intellectually fun that
Speaker 1: I really wanted to talk to Peter. Peter's problem is this,
Speaker 1: how can you use aluminum, just regular aluminum, like from
Speaker 1: an empty can of coke, as a new source of energy.
Speaker 1: The idea of using aluminum as an energy source first
Speaker 1: came to Peter not as a way to deal with
Speaker 1: problems on Earth, but to deal with problems in space,
Speaker 1: specifically problems on Europa. Europa, as you may already know,
Speaker 1: is an icy moon of Jupiter. At the time the
Speaker 1: idea came to him, Peter was working at JPL at
Speaker 1: NASA's Jet propulsion LAUD. He was part of a team
Speaker 1: designing a spaceship to send to Europa. The idea was
Speaker 1: that the spaceship would land on the Moon and then
Speaker 1: drill down through the thick sheet of ice to the
Speaker 1: water below to look for signs of life. But drilling
Speaker 1: through all that ice was going to take a lot
Speaker 1: of energy, and Peter and his colleagues were trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to send that energy all the way
Speaker 1: to Europa to this moon orbiting Jupiter.
Speaker 2: When you send something into space, mass is super precious,
Speaker 2: you know, every gram is very expensive, you know, in
Speaker 2: terms of payload, and so we were sort of sitting
Speaker 2: around debating, you know, like what could go in this
Speaker 2: like little space in that spacecraft that would pack enough energy.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about different lithium ion batteries, for example,
Speaker 2: and I'm sitting there realizing that we're not really thinking
Speaker 2: holistically enough about this problem because the framing and the
Speaker 2: shell and the structural members of the spacecraft are made
Speaker 2: from aluminum, which is you know, twenty time twenty to
Speaker 2: forty times more energy dense than those lithium ion batteries.
Speaker 2: Like I'm looking at these renderings of these spacecraft that
Speaker 2: are sitting on the surface of Europa and then realizing like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, most of this aluminum is doing absolutely nothing,
Speaker 2: Like there's basically it's microgravity on these or on these
Speaker 2: moons that you know, they don't need to be they
Speaker 2: don't need to withstand crazy forces. Once they're there, they
Speaker 2: have to survive launch and then once they're there and landing,
Speaker 2: and then once they're there essentially doing nothing. And I
Speaker 2: thought this is insane, like why are we not why
Speaker 2: we're not utilizing this this energy just sitting around when
Speaker 2: you know, every single gram that you send into space
Speaker 2: is so precious. So I pitched this idea of saying, like,
Speaker 2: you know what if we could consume that aluminum for energy,
Speaker 2: that would dramatically reduce the constraints on what needs to
Speaker 2: go in that in that energy storage box there?
Speaker 1: And what did? What did? What was the response when
Speaker 1: you pitched that idea?
Speaker 2: The response was essentially, you know that that just might
Speaker 2: be crazy enough to work.
Speaker 1: And do they say that every day at JPL. People
Speaker 1: love saying that at JFL, I've had they do. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of out of.
Speaker 2: The box thinkers over there. It was, It's a wonderful
Speaker 2: place to work.
Speaker 1: So what happens you have this idea? What happened?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're sort of sitting around and bouncing ideas
Speaker 2: off one another. I proposed this idea and and you know,
Speaker 2: people sort of dismissed it immediately and then thought from
Speaker 2: and realized, actually, you know, there might be something here.
Speaker 2: So I actually got some some funds to start my
Speaker 2: own research lab sort of within JPL, to to take
Speaker 2: a look at this. I sort of cheekily called it
Speaker 2: the self Cannibalizing Robot Project.
Speaker 1: Because the spaceship is going to go to a moon
Speaker 1: of Jupiter and then eat itself, burn itself up to
Speaker 1: provide energy for its for its work.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it's going to assume that super energy, dense exoskeleton
Speaker 2: that it no longer needs.
Speaker 1: Like, what does that actually look like in your mind? Like,
Speaker 1: so this thing is there, it's on this moon of Jupiter.
Speaker 1: What actually happens?
Speaker 2: So to give you an example of how this might look,
Speaker 2: So the spacecraft would have these aluminum landing legs. They
Speaker 2: would land on the surface of this this icy moon,
Speaker 2: and those legs would essentially cork screw into the ice
Speaker 2: and once they're there, they undergo this process called activation,
Speaker 2: where you have this large chunk of aluminium. It can
Speaker 2: actually get broken down by water. It's basically a rusting process,
Speaker 2: but accelerated, you know, like a million times. And the
Speaker 2: process is exothermic as well. So as that aluminum starts exothermically,
Speaker 2: it is releasing heat, reacting with that water, it's producing
Speaker 2: hydrogen gas. These legs actually leave behind these little underground
Speaker 2: caverns of hydrogen gas. So the leg detaches, it degrades,
Speaker 2: it disintegrates the rusts, and then it leaves behind this
Speaker 2: little cavern of hydrogen which then that robot or maybe
Speaker 2: other robots can navigate over and tap into as a
Speaker 2: refueling station.
Speaker 1: So the landing legs decay, they leave behind hydrogen, and
Speaker 1: that hydrogen is fuel that can then power the drill
Speaker 1: that's going to go deep down into the.
Speaker 2: Ice exactly, or communications or you know, imagery equipment.
Speaker 1: So did it get anywhere?
Speaker 2: So we ended up proving out some of the core
Speaker 2: aspects of that technology. The specific program I was working on,
Speaker 2: the funding was sort of called into question. You know,
Speaker 2: these are big congressional It's basically a line item in
Speaker 2: a congressional budget, and for whatever reason, that went away
Speaker 2: and the interest waned.
Speaker 1: And you leave when your project gets canceled.
Speaker 2: So I, yes, I ended up leaving and going back
Speaker 2: to school to further this concept. And I had found
Speaker 2: a professor that I had worked with as an undergrad,
Speaker 2: Doug Heart, who was really excited to take this technology
Speaker 2: to the next level where we could actually use it
Speaker 2: for Earth applications.
Speaker 1: Huh. So use it for Earth applications is a big difference.
Speaker 1: Like you had a spaceship that eats itself, which seems
Speaker 1: like very elegant and very reasonable, right, because the core
Speaker 1: idea is like, oh, it's really hard to get to Jupiter.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to get you know, the marginal gram
Speaker 1: of stuff to Jupiter. So if we can use the
Speaker 1: spaceship itself, that's amazing. Like it's not obvious to me
Speaker 1: that you'd be like, oh, the Jupiter think got canceled,
Speaker 1: but let's use it on Earth, Like why is that
Speaker 1: a why does that even come to mind?
Speaker 2: So, for one, you know, I was really obsessed with
Speaker 2: doing something Earth related. You know, I spent all my
Speaker 2: time every waking second, thinking externally, thinking about the Solar System,
Speaker 2: thinking about these other planets, life elsewhere, realizing how precious
Speaker 2: and especial and interesting it is that we have life
Speaker 2: on Earth now and uh, and wanting to do something
Speaker 2: to preserve that just sort of a sense of like
Speaker 2: cosmic you know, beauty if you if you will.
Speaker 1: Like having looked at these other planets and moons, is like, boy,
Speaker 1: that'd be a way harder place to live than Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, you'r lived ex I was
Speaker 2: living in la at the time, and like, there's so
Speaker 2: much to point to and and and think. Was sort
Speaker 2: of miserable at the place. You know, you're stuck in
Speaker 2: traffic and you look over and someone's sort of screaming
Speaker 2: to themselves in the car next next to you, and
Speaker 2: and realizing, you know, existence on life is really hard.
Speaker 2: But when you spend so much time looking at at
Speaker 2: existence or the possibility exist on other planets, you realize,
Speaker 2: you know, we we have it pretty good. And you know,
Speaker 2: we've spent actually literally billions of years adapting to to
Speaker 2: the gravity of Earth and to the pressures and to
Speaker 2: the temperatures. And you know, why, why waste that? Why
Speaker 2: waste that? So?
Speaker 1: Okay, so you you start looking down instead of looking up,
Speaker 1: Uh wha, what happens?
Speaker 2: So I started thinking about, okay, where where else might
Speaker 2: we find energy that's being underutilized on Earth? And I
Speaker 2: realized that there was a lot of aluminum sitting around
Speaker 2: doing nothing on Earth. You know, it's I looked into
Speaker 2: aluminium recycling, realized that there's a bit of green washing
Speaker 2: going on. We don't do as good of a job
Speaker 2: as we think. And you know, it's just it's more
Speaker 2: difficult to recycle aluminum than we're led to believe.
Speaker 1: Often, even aluminum cans. I would think aluminum cans would
Speaker 1: all be uniform and therefore relatively manageable to recycle. Not
Speaker 1: so well.
Speaker 2: We've created an interesting problem for ourselves there, because an
Speaker 2: aluminum can is actually two different allays. There's the sort
Speaker 2: of cap is a separate piece from the body, which
Speaker 2: needs to be deep drawn, and so you need basically
Speaker 2: different properties for the manufacturing. And you know, when you
Speaker 2: open the can, you want it to sort of snap
Speaker 2: open and be very satisfying.
Speaker 1: That snap if it's destroying the world, that's an unfortunate
Speaker 1: consequence exactly.
Speaker 2: But with the body, you don't want that snap when
Speaker 2: you're when you're manufacturing it. And so so they end
Speaker 2: up using two different alloys, and so when you melt
Speaker 2: it back down, you basically can only make one of those,
Speaker 2: and you have to add some primary aluminum s virgin
Speaker 2: aluminum in order to do that, because you have to
Speaker 2: dilute out some of the impurities. All that to say,
Speaker 2: it's it's a much harder problem than people think. And
Speaker 2: what that means practically speaking is that a lot of
Speaker 2: aluminum just ends up in landfills. You know, it ends
Speaker 2: up getting exported to countries where manual labor is cheaper,
Speaker 2: so that they can pick out those impurities by hand
Speaker 2: sorting is not quite there yet.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh and and so.
Speaker 2: You end up with billions of tons of aluminum that
Speaker 2: that is underutilized.
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about aluminum for a minute, because
Speaker 1: it's really interesting, right, Like, there is this whole history
Speaker 1: of aluminum. You know, if you go back a couple
Speaker 1: hundred years at this point, right, it is used to
Speaker 1: be this wildly precious metal because even though it's super
Speaker 1: abundant in the in the earth, it is pretty much
Speaker 1: always bound up with something else, usually oxygen. Right, there
Speaker 1: was this moment that everybody writes about it, and I
Speaker 1: hope it's true. Where like Napoleon the third right, the Napoleon.
Speaker 1: After Napoleon supposedly like for his like B list guests
Speaker 1: would give them plates of like silver and gold, but
Speaker 1: the A list guests got the aluminum plates because there
Speaker 1: was this wildly rare, beautiful thing. But then somebody figured
Speaker 1: out how to make illuminum much more easily, right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, so if you think about like the ages
Speaker 2: of society, right, there's like the Stone Age, and then
Speaker 2: there's the Iron Age and the Bronze Age, and you
Speaker 2: know the order in which those occurred are basically how
Speaker 2: how close to that useful form are they found in nature?
Speaker 2: So obviously the stone age triviual. The stone is the
Speaker 2: stone is a stone.
Speaker 1: Finding a rock is the easy part.
Speaker 2: Yes, you put a rock on top of another rock.
Speaker 2: You do that a couple more times, and you've got
Speaker 2: you've got stonehengs, you've got you've got houses, you've got
Speaker 2: you know, we were we were doing a good job
Speaker 2: stacking stones. Slightly more complicated, you know, you have metals
Speaker 2: that are more closely found in their elemental forms, so
Speaker 2: things like copper. And then you have things that are
Speaker 2: not found as a pure metal but can be easily reduced.
Speaker 2: So something like iron, for example, is a little bit
Speaker 2: easier where you can take the iron ore and you
Speaker 2: can heat it up with some some carbon usually just
Speaker 2: from some some charcoal, uh, and get a workable metal there.
Speaker 1: But this is way more complex than stones. We've made
Speaker 1: some technological progress there, yes, so big leap, maybe the biggest.
Speaker 1: It's a huge leap.
Speaker 2: Uh. And and then and then you get to aluminum, which,
Speaker 2: despite being extremely abundant, is like you said, is not
Speaker 2: found in its its base metal elemental form. It's found
Speaker 2: as various aluminum oxides, and aluminum binds super tightly to
Speaker 2: those oxygen atoms, and so to rip them off requires
Speaker 2: a lot of energy.
Speaker 1: Right, And as I understand it, because of that, aluminum
Speaker 1: in its pure form was super rare until like well
Speaker 1: into the nineteenth century, and then there was essentially this
Speaker 1: technological breakthrough, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the eighteen hundreds, independently, an American scientist Hall
Speaker 2: and the I believe a French scientist Hero both figured
Speaker 2: out an electrochemical process that worked, and yeah, within the
Speaker 2: span of a couple decades, you know, they were actually
Speaker 2: able to start making kilograms and then tons of that material.
Speaker 1: And Hall, by the way, started the Aluminum Company of America, right,
Speaker 1: which is Alcoa, which is today steal a giant company.
Speaker 1: Like the dude who figured it out started that company
Speaker 1: is like, it's like the Edison, It's like the ge
Speaker 1: of aluminum. Right, Like a guy figured it out and
Speaker 1: started a company, and it's still a giant company exactly.
Speaker 2: And the US government was so proud of this achievement
Speaker 2: that they cast which at the time was I think
Speaker 2: the largest piece of cast aluminum, which is like three kilograms.
Speaker 2: They cast the point for the Washington Monument in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C.
Speaker 1: Because aluminum was so fine and so modern, and it
Speaker 1: was like the symbol of the age.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and it had all these unique properties that made
Speaker 2: it so valuable for just a very wide range of applications.
Speaker 1: So you start with the work in space. Then you
Speaker 1: start looking at Earth and seeing all this underutilized aluminum,
Speaker 1: which you recognize as this incredible potential source of energy.
Speaker 1: Like where does that all go? Like where do you land?
Speaker 2: So then I had to pivot a little bit and
Speaker 2: look at a problem that you know, people care more
Speaker 2: about from a financial sense, and that's just this general
Speaker 2: idea of fuel moving energy around. And it turns out
Speaker 2: aluminum is really good for that.
Speaker 1: Because it is so energy dense. Weirdly, if you can
Speaker 1: if you can figure out a relatively straightforward way of
Speaker 1: getting the energy out of aluminum when and where you
Speaker 1: want to, then suddenly aluminum itself is this incredible fuel
Speaker 1: that we just don't think of as fuel exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know, aluminum is actually the most abundant metal
Speaker 2: in the Earth's crust, so it's not something we'd run
Speaker 2: out of.
Speaker 1: So I get the idea. Right. At some point, you
Speaker 1: start a company and try and go from an idea
Speaker 1: to you know, a thing in the world, where are
Speaker 1: you now, Like what what are you doing?
Speaker 2: So like countries like Germany or Japan, you know, most
Speaker 2: of the energy that they consume is fossil based and
Speaker 2: a lot of it is imported. And so because aluminum
Speaker 2: has these properties where it's energy dense, the productions electrified,
Speaker 2: it's super abundant, it's a great candidate for replacing fossil
Speaker 2: fuels for those applications. And so that meant that we
Speaker 2: needed to get the cost down of using this process.
Speaker 2: You know, when you're essentially burning something, it needs to
Speaker 2: be quite literally dirt cheap. And you know, we were
Speaker 2: doing some interesting things with catalysts and promoters, and you know,
Speaker 2: whenever you're doing industrial chemistry, sort of the devil's in
Speaker 2: the details in terms of the cost drivers. And so
Speaker 2: that gave me this new motivation to start, you know,
Speaker 2: solving those correct problems, so to speak.
Speaker 1: And that's what correct because they're correct in terms of
Speaker 1: the market. Correct because somebody might actually pay you to
Speaker 1: do the thing at scale. That's what makes it correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the it's usually the thing that's really hard
Speaker 2: that standing in the way of someone actually using this
Speaker 2: technology in a practical sense.
Speaker 1: And in this instance, what is the thing that's really
Speaker 1: hard that's standing in the way of someone using this technology.
Speaker 2: It's always cost at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Technoeconomics, right, that term talking to sort of energy transition
Speaker 1: people like technoeconomics is fundamentally what the energy transition is about. Right,
Speaker 1: exactly where where are you now? What like specifically, do
Speaker 1: you have a sort of first use case in mind?
Speaker 2: Our first you know, beach head market so to speak,
Speaker 2: is actually in the aluminum industry. It's a way of
Speaker 2: enabling circularity within the illumin industry to solve this issue
Speaker 2: that aluminum waste is not always efficiently handled. So what
Speaker 2: we can do is we can take aluminum waste. We
Speaker 2: can extract that energy to decarbonize some of the last
Speaker 2: remaining truly fossil based processes in the illuminum industry.
Speaker 1: So, just to be clear, this initial use you're using
Speaker 1: the ideas to use scrap a loluminium as a source
Speaker 1: of energy that will be used in making new.
Speaker 2: Aluminium exactly, or just in making aluminum oxide, which can
Speaker 2: also go and turn into other products as well.
Speaker 1: So okay, So that is a weird clever place to start.
Speaker 1: Are you actually doing that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So today we're doing it on a small scale, but
Speaker 2: it is it's definitely at a subscale. So you know,
Speaker 2: to give you a sense, these plants are producing aluminum
Speaker 2: on such a scale that they need megawatts of thermal power,
Speaker 2: we're still at killowat scale. We're maybe twenty to fifty
Speaker 2: x away from really getting started in a meaningful way.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the first one. Like what's the like
Speaker 1: less niche one. That's a little bit farther.
Speaker 2: Out right, So what's interesting, like on our global scales,
Speaker 2: if we look at today's aluminum supply chain, because it
Speaker 2: is their energy intensive to make, it's essentially an energy
Speaker 2: supply chain. So we can look at at where what
Speaker 2: countries are connected by these aluminum flows and and see
Speaker 2: that oh, actually, you know, you could you can essentially
Speaker 2: just expand this and then use it directly as an
Speaker 2: energy flow in addition to just a material flow.
Speaker 1: Right, So if you're if you're making aluminum in Iceland
Speaker 1: and sending it to Germany, you're functionally sending energy from
Speaker 1: the whatever geothermal vents in Iceland to Germany. You just
Speaker 1: don't know it because you think you're sending aluminum cans.
Speaker 1: Is that what you mean?
Speaker 2: Yes, although in Iceland right they're using more hydro to
Speaker 2: make the their aluminum, but similar ideas. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's actually this closed loop process where you you essentially
Speaker 2: recharge your aluminum oxide in a place like Iceland, you
Speaker 2: then ship just that metal in these big billets to Germany.
Speaker 2: You use our process to turn that into heat, uh,
Speaker 2: and then you send that aluminum oxide essentially back on
Speaker 2: the same boat maybe that that brought to in the
Speaker 2: first place. You and you repeat the process. We're actually
Speaker 2: calling it the world's first rechargeable fuel.
Speaker 1: So you get so let's just talk through both how
Speaker 1: you sort of recharge it, which is basically how you
Speaker 1: make aluminum, and then how you get the the heat
Speaker 1: out of it, right, how you get the energy out
Speaker 1: of it. So just the basic like how you make aluminum,
Speaker 1: you get box side out of the ground. What do
Speaker 1: you do to make aluminum?
Speaker 2: So you know, starting from box site, you heat it up.
Speaker 2: You need to produce aluminum hydroxide, and then you bake
Speaker 2: that and you drive off the water molecules and then
Speaker 2: you're left with a particular grade of aluminum oxide that
Speaker 2: then goes into your hall Hero process where they electrochemically
Speaker 2: split the aluminum and the oxygen, and then you're just
Speaker 2: left with that metallic aluminum.
Speaker 1: Okay, just pure elemental aluminum yep. Okay, So now it
Speaker 1: comes to you what do you do with it?
Speaker 2: So it's proprietary, but it's a it's a surface treatment
Speaker 2: to to the aluminum that that causes the aluminum to
Speaker 2: break down along the micro structure when it's exposed to water.
Speaker 1: Okay. And then so once you've applied your secret sauce
Speaker 1: to the aluminum, what happens in this universe where you're
Speaker 1: using it as a fuel source? Like what what happened?
Speaker 2: So then you know, then you just have sort of
Speaker 2: this general purpose fuel which you can use to replace
Speaker 2: fossil fuels for all sorts of applications. Like I was
Speaker 2: saying earlier, you split water when you let aluminum rusk,
Speaker 2: and so then you have the rest of that energy
Speaker 2: in the hydrogen. You can then just burn that hydrogen
Speaker 2: and then that will just produce heat at you know,
Speaker 2: way above a thousand degrees celsius. And you know, starting
Speaker 2: with those high temperatures, that gives you a lot of
Speaker 2: flexibility to produce steam that can run turbomachinery, but can
Speaker 2: also replace fossil fuel for a lot of really high
Speaker 2: temperature applications a.
Speaker 1: Hard problem, right, Like steel people talk about sort of
Speaker 1: decarbonizing steel and these sort of industrial processes that need
Speaker 1: really high temperatures is a particularly hard problem that you
Speaker 1: can't do with sort of standard and so this could
Speaker 1: do that exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're just talking high temperature heat and you know,
Speaker 2: any any process that requires that would be a good candidate.
Speaker 1: Like you want it at a steel plant in Germany
Speaker 1: or something. You want it at a at a place
Speaker 1: where they need a lot of heat and are importing
Speaker 1: fossil fuels to get it, right now, Like that's the
Speaker 1: sort of obvious use case.
Speaker 2: We're using like local coal or you know. But yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: In a minute, why Peter's plan might not work. So
Speaker 1: when you have you know, your first reactors out in
Speaker 1: the real world doing real work, Like just help me
Speaker 1: picture it, Like what is your first reactor out in
Speaker 1: the world. What's it going to look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so for the first you know, megawatt scale systems,
Speaker 2: we're talking like a four foot by four foot by
Speaker 2: four foot cube.
Speaker 1: Okay, so so so quite small. That's the size of
Speaker 1: the box. And then dumb question, is there like somebody
Speaker 1: like putting just like scrap aluminum into the box, Like
Speaker 1: is it like a guy shoveling coal on the railroad
Speaker 1: two hundred years ago? Like what's going on?
Speaker 2: It's not unlike that. Okay, let me let me put
Speaker 2: it that way. And so there's there's conveyor belts and
Speaker 2: sort of shredders and you know, the basically all the
Speaker 2: standard equipment you would have in the in the waste
Speaker 2: processing industry. And then they'll get to a form factor
Speaker 2: the basically these pellets that then get automatically fed into
Speaker 2: the box.
Speaker 1: What happens inside the box.
Speaker 2: So this is where a lot of interesting stuff happens.
Speaker 2: This is where we actually are facilitating an aluminum water
Speaker 2: chemical reaction. And so you're getting these big pieces of
Speaker 2: aluminum that are going in that illuminum is getting broken
Speaker 2: down at the microstructure by our activator compound and then
Speaker 2: it's interacting with water. So you can imagine it's just
Speaker 2: in its simplest form, it's just essentially a vessel where
Speaker 2: you're mixing all these things together. But easier said than done.
Speaker 1: Okay, and then what comes out of the box.
Speaker 2: So the box will fundamentally have two to three outputs.
Speaker 2: So the first two are the sort of the energy
Speaker 2: the power outputs, and so depending on the customer, you know,
Speaker 2: we're able to provide energy as heat or hydrogen gas
Speaker 2: which can then be burned or some combination. And so
Speaker 2: depending on that application, you basically have a pipe that
Speaker 2: comes out that has this energy containing gas.
Speaker 1: Hot air, hydrogen gas, whatever they want exactly.
Speaker 2: And then the other is this refined aluminum hydroxide, which
Speaker 2: again you know, these companies that make aluminum or use
Speaker 2: aluminum at some point in the value stream, you know,
Speaker 2: upstream of that they are sourcing this material, and so
Speaker 2: this actually saves them having to go in mine additional
Speaker 2: box side. So if you if you look at this
Speaker 2: whole process through the lens of making aluminum oxide, it's
Speaker 2: actually carbon negative. So you're getting this essentially the only
Speaker 2: carbon free source of aluminum hydroxide there is in the world.
Speaker 2: There's no other way to make this.
Speaker 1: Why might it not work?
Speaker 2: So, you know, we have very high confidence in our
Speaker 2: go to market strategy, which is using aluminum waste to decarbonize.
Speaker 2: You know, these very specific industries, but at some point
Speaker 2: you do run out of aluminum waste.
Speaker 1: You know. Well wait, so you're just stipulating that the
Speaker 1: aluminum waste part will work at scale and the technoeconomics
Speaker 1: will work. Like, might that part not work there?
Speaker 2: Well, it's so cheap you have a huge buffer for
Speaker 2: it to work even poorly, and it still makes sense.
Speaker 1: Huh. Say more about that?
Speaker 2: You know, like we're talking like really bottom bottom of
Speaker 2: the barrel aluminum waste. So this is stuff that in
Speaker 2: some cases companies are actually paying other peoples to take
Speaker 2: away because it's too contaminated.
Speaker 1: And so can you use that that absolutely garbage aluminum,
Speaker 1: Like you can use whatever crappy recycled aluminium that's a
Speaker 1: mess and that nobody wants. You can use that efficiently
Speaker 1: and and it works for you. Yep, yep.
Speaker 2: We're just our process eats aluminum and leaves everything else
Speaker 2: pretty much untouched.
Speaker 1: And is that the aluminum you're using now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we're we're we're looking at those you know,
Speaker 2: low quality feestock, and it's a lot like food and
Speaker 2: beverage packaging and stuff that's that's contaminated or maybe it's
Speaker 2: like mixed with other metals or plastics or organic contamination.
Speaker 1: It's what I put out on the curb every week,
Speaker 1: and I think there's no way that can actually be useful.
Speaker 1: They are probably just putting it in the garbage. You're saying,
Speaker 1: that's what you can use exactly. Yeah, and how big
Speaker 1: is that? I mean, that's if that works, that's a lot, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're just taking it as given that that's going
Speaker 1: to work, that's a lot of success. If that works, right,
Speaker 1: presumably that's a very large market for inputs for you. No, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's a large market, but given
Speaker 2: the scale of the you know, emissions globally, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not really going to put a dent in that.
Speaker 2: It's you know, it's it's probably a good outcome for
Speaker 2: our company and for definitely our customers for using this technology,
Speaker 2: but it's not the impact that I'm interested in specifically.
Speaker 1: Like, it's not going to reduce the average temperature of
Speaker 1: the Earth in one hundred years.
Speaker 2: No, you know, it's going to have more positive impacts
Speaker 2: than just carbon emissions reductions because you're also cleaning up
Speaker 2: the mining industry around aluminium oxide production.
Speaker 1: So this sort of recycled aluminum that nobody else wants,
Speaker 1: is enough to supply the energy for this one piece
Speaker 1: of the production of new aluminum? Is that I mean?
Speaker 1: Is that basically what you're saying? Yep, exactly, But then
Speaker 1: we have the whole rest of the world to worry
Speaker 1: about exactly. Okay, so tell me about the whole rest
Speaker 1: of the world. So, once you're using all the crappy
Speaker 1: recycled aluminum that nobody else wants and decarbonizing this piece
Speaker 1: of the process of making new aluminum, what's the what's
Speaker 1: the next move?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the next move is to close the loop,
Speaker 2: as we like to say. So that's actually recharging the
Speaker 2: byproduct of our own reaction, doing that in a place
Speaker 2: where you have abundant renewables, and then sending it to
Speaker 2: a place where you do not have abundant renewables. And
Speaker 2: at that scale, then you know there's no constraint on
Speaker 2: the amount of aluminum that we have access to it.
Speaker 2: It's literally the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust.
Speaker 1: So in that universe you were, it's sort of end
Speaker 1: to end. You're just in some clean way that doesn't
Speaker 1: entirely exist yet. Turning box site into pure aluminum, which
Speaker 1: then is your fuel, and you're sending it to wherever
Speaker 1: they need it, and you're turning that aluminum into heat,
Speaker 1: and then you're the product of that reaction. Is what
Speaker 1: aluminum oxide that you're sending back to your clean plant
Speaker 1: and turning it back into pure aluminum and just going
Speaker 1: back and forth like that. That's the dream exactly, yep.
Speaker 1: And on the technoeconomic side, maybe somebody will come up
Speaker 1: with something cheaper or easier or something, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're not just competing against what exists today. You're competing
Speaker 1: against all these other smart people who are trying ultimately
Speaker 1: to solve the same problem you're trying to solve, but
Speaker 1: in different ways. Right.
Speaker 2: You know, we're not necessarily too worried about that. In
Speaker 2: some ways, we will need multiple solutions, so you need
Speaker 2: to get like maybe ten kilograms of aluminum reacting at once.
Speaker 2: Easier said than done. But you're not talking massive systems,
Speaker 2: and what that means is you can modularize, so you
Speaker 2: can start rolling this out. So we really only have
Speaker 2: to do a fifty x scale up really well, and
Speaker 2: then we can mass produce what we call our aluminum
Speaker 2: water reactors.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't have to be that big. You just
Speaker 1: get a kind of little reactor and then you put
Speaker 1: twenty of them right next to each other. Is that
Speaker 1: what exactly?
Speaker 2: Exactly, so you don't take on that scale risk all
Speaker 2: at once. So that's you know, you know again like
Speaker 2: scaling up fifty x is also a major challenge.
Speaker 1: And non trivial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, we we have a big team
Speaker 2: of really smart people working on it. But you know what,
Speaker 2: you think, thinking long term, there's there's kind of a
Speaker 2: timing risk, I would say, where as we scale these technologies,
Speaker 2: you know, we need people to be ready to use them.
Speaker 2: And while you know this early, these early adopters in
Speaker 2: the aluminum industry, they're ready to use this tech now roughly,
Speaker 2: you know, as we go to decarbonized industrial heat more broadly,
Speaker 2: you know, they may not be ready to commit to
Speaker 2: a new technology, unproven technology with you know, supply chain
Speaker 2: risk and basically the things that are standing in the
Speaker 2: way of them moving to any other technology.
Speaker 1: Well, and they are industries that operate at massive scale, right,
Speaker 1: and you're like kind of doing this little thing and
Speaker 1: trying to scale it up, and it seems it seems
Speaker 1: like there's like a chasm you have to leap in
Speaker 1: some way to get from where you are to like,
Speaker 1: you know, decarbonizing a steel plant or something.
Speaker 2: And you know, we're hedging that risk by not starting
Speaker 2: there and starting with the folks that have a reasonably
Speaker 2: high adoption readiness level that is commensurate with our technology
Speaker 2: readiness level.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to end the main part of
Speaker 1: the interview on the like why it might not work
Speaker 1: as as kind of a tenuated bomber. So like when
Speaker 1: you think happy thoughts about the world ten years from now,
Speaker 1: well like what does it look like and what is
Speaker 1: your place in it?
Speaker 2: Lookally, you know, you look at replacing the fossil fuel
Speaker 2: supply chain, which has been developed and optimized and obsessed
Speaker 2: over for you know, basically one hundred years and more.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't just replace all of that with
Speaker 2: one thing. This is a sort of everyone problem. And
Speaker 2: and yeah, you know we I love looking at this.
Speaker 2: If you google aluminum supply chain, probably a map comes
Speaker 2: up showing these these lines going from places today with
Speaker 2: lots of renewables, and you know, I want to see
Speaker 2: that turned into the next energy supply chain. That's that's
Speaker 2: what excites me.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning ground Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to finish with the lightning round it right
Speaker 1: that you sort of remote control drove the Curiosity rover
Speaker 1: on Mars. Yes, not just me.
Speaker 2: I was on the team that did operations for Curiosity,
Speaker 2: and I was working on the arms specifically. It takes
Speaker 2: about one hundred people every single day to operate this thing.
Speaker 1: Oh so you like made the arm move and pick
Speaker 1: things up.
Speaker 2: A part of the team that did that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: pretty much.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite part of Mars.
Speaker 2: Well, there's really only one interesting part of ours, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, which is the mountain.
Speaker 1: Is there one mountain? It's not a mountain on Mars.
Speaker 1: It's the mountain on Mars.
Speaker 2: It's it's like a bulge in the planet that you know,
Speaker 2: you could call a mountain. But so if we agree
Speaker 2: that that's a mountain, it's actually the largest mountain in
Speaker 2: the Solar System.
Speaker 1: What's interesting too about it.
Speaker 2: The thing that was cool is that you can basically,
Speaker 2: as you drive up sort of get a hiss a
Speaker 2: geological history of Mars as you sample different rocks, and
Speaker 2: you know, Curiosity was basically just driving up this thing
Speaker 2: until it dies.
Speaker 1: Huh, what's your second favorite metal?
Speaker 2: Probably I would have to say iron, you know, just
Speaker 2: from from its importance.
Speaker 1: There's a whole age. Yeah, I actually talked to you
Speaker 1: probably cross paths with Mateo Hotamo form energy. Right. He
Speaker 1: is using iron to make batteries, and it's, you know,
Speaker 1: in a way somewhat analogous to what you're doing, right,
Speaker 1: Like their batteries are essentially iron that is rusting and
Speaker 1: unrusting in the way that you're rusting and unrusting aluminum.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, exactly, and you know they're using a cheaper material,
Speaker 2: but it's it's also less energy dense, so it's really.
Speaker 1: Wildly less right, Like their play is like we don't
Speaker 1: care about energy debt. They can be gigantic out of
Speaker 1: the desert.
Speaker 2: They're just going for costs and so it's it's amazing
Speaker 2: for first stationary energy.
Speaker 1: I think what they're doing is school. I mean it's complementary, right,
Speaker 1: Like they are not going to generate heat to power
Speaker 1: a steel mill and you're not going to be doing
Speaker 1: energy storage at utility scale, right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and actually you know, we it's very complementary
Speaker 2: in that in order to do truly carbon free aluminum
Speaker 2: smelting with renewables like solar and wind, you need to
Speaker 2: solve the intermittency issue because these pol hero cells run
Speaker 2: really hot, so you know, solar wind plus like a
Speaker 2: form energy a facility could could be an interesting way
Speaker 2: to enable more aluminum production.
Speaker 1: Is there some engineer, either living or from history, who
Speaker 1: you think everybody should know about?
Speaker 2: I would say I would say people these days don't
Speaker 2: give enough credit to the engineers from the Apollo era
Speaker 2: of NASA, where you know, we're like obsessing over going
Speaker 2: back to the Moon and like, you know, we think
Speaker 2: what we're doing now is impressive, like you know, sending
Speaker 2: people into space like what we were doing back then
Speaker 2: with the tools that they had.
Speaker 1: They did it basically on an iPhone right yeah wait
Speaker 1: wait less yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: I just I just think that's insane and that and
Speaker 2: that it worked. Uh, you know we got people back
Speaker 2: from the Moon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, getting them there was the easy part. Getting them
Speaker 1: back was hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Peter Goddard is the co founder and CEO of Found Energy.
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was
Speaker 1: edited by Lyddy Jean Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem.