Recyclable by Design
Our recycling design principle makes our system nearly 100% recyclable utilizing an already well-established scrap market.
Exigent Thermal Storage system, as well as materials of construction, are environmentally friendly. There are no hazardous materials.
In contrast to electrochemical batteries, in particular Li-ion, where recycling is an environmental issue, which to date, is not clearly resolved but will no doubt add to the ultimate cost of ownership.
Li-ion disposal costs have not been factored into the purchase price nor the current operating cost and much like the sword of Damocles, hangs over the heads of grid- battery projects. The true environmental impact of lithium batteries is largely ignored, if not mostly unquantified. Lastly, to compound the issue, all batteries require periodic replacement, which means that battery recycling will be required multiple times during every project.
Contrasting Lithium-ion and Exigent
As electrochemical batteries, in particular Lithium variants, are nearly the sole focus of energy storage discussions today, it is appropriate to contrast them with thermal storage. To begin, thermal and electrochemical batteries have almost nothing in common; that is other than the final goal of delivering energy when the customer needs it. To the heart of the matter, FLS’s thermal batteries are approximately 2% of the cost of Lithium battery storage, on a 25-year lifetime basis. To be clear, this is compared on kW-hour electric basis; this means that it includes the conversion of stored thermal energy to electric energy. None of this is to say that Lithium batteries don’t have their place, they clearly do. Moreover, thermal batteries are only practical on a large scale. While LI-ion batteries are eminently practical for small storage. In fact, in the near future it will become obvious that there is little or no market overlap between Li-ion batteries and thermal storage.
Lithium batteries live up to 10 years with constantly decaying capacity. Whereas Exigent’s thermal battery is designed for very long life, extendable to 50 years with no substantial decay in capacity.