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Glacies logo

We envision a world with free heating and free cooling

We do this using

water

as a way to store energy

We can apply our technology to decarbonize large industrial processes

Contact us

Zone industrielle

We are now applying our technology in the mining sector

Underground mines have large air renewal requirements. During the summer, the air needs to be cooled not to exceed safety temperatures underground for the workers. During the winter, the air needs to be heated above the freezing point to avoid shaft freezing.

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Currently, underground mines rely on the combustion of fossil fuel to heat the air above freezing point before entering the underground shaft. That represent more than 20% of all GHG emissions of underground mines.

Glacies developed a heating reactor that functions as a specialized heat pump that changes the pumped water into ice and the heat is released into the flowing air, effectively decarbonating the ventilation system. Glacies vision is to enable seasonal thermal storage: meaning using the passage of seasons (winter-summer) to store heat using the phase change properties of water. The reactor is producing ice as a by-product during the winter. That ice can be used during the summer to cool the mine. The mining industry is a good fit for Glacies seasonal thermal storage technology. The industry is looking for decarbonization solutions and a mining site is simply perfect for large scale energy storage using water. Glacies reactor can use the water stored in the settling ponds. The Glacies heating reactor can rapidly reduce by more than 70% the GHG emissions related to underground ventilation heating. The reactor is completely on the surface and will be fully automated. The only input is water, and the only output is ice (pumped as ice slurry). The reactor is very efficient, the annual coefficient of performance is above 15 (meaning we use 1kW of electricity to generate 15kW of heat). The payback period is relatively short for a decarbonization technology. For sites using oil, the payback is less than 1.5 year, for propane, it is between 3-5 years and for natural gas it is between 6-9 years. This technology is already incredible for all the advantages related to clean heating. When we use it as a seasonal thermal storage system, we can reduce the total cost and energy usage related to heating and cooling. This is our vision, using the passage of the seasons to store large amounts of energy.

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ACHIEVEMENTS

We had a rapid TRL progression in the last two years

Winter 21-22

We did a few small-scale prototypes to get a grasp on the basics of the technology.

Summer 2022

We did extensive testing on prototypes with an increasing base power in an industrial freezer. 

Winter 22-23

We built and tested a prototype with a base power of 260kW (15 000CFM, 10% scale). 

Next steps

We are putting in motion the pilot/scale-up phases and putting together a consortium of mining partners. Contact us to join this transformative project.

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