This week we will look at an Australian startup that has developed a new thermal storage material for storing excess power and heat. We also discover the latest advance in robotic noses that can smell diseases in humans. We examine Rolls Royce’s new electric plane and finally we speculate about the existence of Planet 9. Is there a 9th planet lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system as yet, undiscovered?
Thermal Power Storage
Australian startup, MGA Thermal Storage founded in 2019, has developed a new type of thermal storage material called Miscibility Gap Alloys (MGA). These alloys store a huge amount of energy as heat in a safe and easy to use way.
Modular blocks of MGA are stacked into insulated storage tanks. The blocks can store energy for use in a range of applications including electrical grid stability, residential and commercial space heating and industrial process/waste heat. The initial focus is to store intermittent renewable energy from wind and solar in order to provide base load power to the electric grid.
The alloys are made up of two components. One of the components will melt while the other stays solid. The melting phase is dispersed as fine grains and the non melting phase forms a continuous matrix. When heat is applied the fine grains melt, storing energy, while the matrix phase holds everything together and rapidly distributes heat when needed. This results in a structure with high energy storage capacity. There are no expensive containment structures and the materials used are abundant and safe. The materials can be cycled a huge number of times without losing storage capacity.
MGA systems can be custom built for a wide range of operating temperatures and systems for temperatures ranging from 200C to 1400C are under development. The capture and reuse of waste industrial heat is a particularly attractive segment.
One potential application is to extend the life of current coal powered power stations. In conventional power stations the Boilers (used to heat water by burning coal) are the first components to require replacement or to reach end of life. All the other components, transformers, electrical installations etc have a longer life and are usually junked when stations reach end of life. Gradual installation of MGA blocks in the power station as the boilers reach their end of life and the increasing storage of renewable power will allow the balance of the power station to remain operating for quite some time.
MGA recently raised $8million from a range of investors (including Main Sequence Ventures, the tech investment arm of the CSIRO) to expand their manufacturing capability and to develop export markets.
Robotic Noses Smelling Disease
It has long been known that when a healthy cell is attacked by a virus, a toxic byproduct is produced. We expel that byproduct via our breath, sweat or urine. In theory that happens from the first stage of infection.
Being able to detect that byproduct is therefore the easiest way to detect a wide range of diseases early. Dogs have been trained to smell cancer. A dogs sense of smell is up to 100,000 times more sensitive than humans, however dogs are expensive to train and they lose concentration easily.
Many readers will remember that I was part of the clinical trial in Japan for a test that used nematodes for early detection of cancer. In that test a drop of urine was used to see if the nematodes could smell the cancer. See more here. We have also examined electronic noses using wetware for explosive detection here.
A team at MIT have been busy developing the Nano-Nose which is 200 times more sensitive than a dog’s nose when detecting and identifying tiny traces of different molecules emitted from the human body. An AI is being developed to allow the Nano-Nose sensors to be trained to the interpret complex patterns of molecules that occur with a range of diseases. Detecting the presence of an individual molecule will not provide an accurate diagnosis however the presence of a complex pattern of molecules can. Dogs can pick up these patterns naturally. The machines need to be trained.
So far the team have successfully trained the AI to recognize prostate cancer from urine samples with 70% accuracy. Once they have built the robotic nose for prostate cancer it will be completely scalable for other diseases. The next step is to replicate the study with at least 5,000 samples outside the pristine conditions of the laboratory. There are a range of projects working towards the goal of using a robotic smelling apparatus to detect disease. Progress is likely to speed up significantly as larger data sets become available for training.
The ultimate goal is to have an app on our smartphones that will be able to detect the first signs of disease based upon smell. The team believes that this will be possible within 5 years.
Rolls Royce’s Electric Plane
Rolls Royce have just completed the maiden flight of their first all electric aircraft. The flight took off from Boscombe Down in the UK and flew for 15 minutes.
Just over a year ago Rolls Royce joined the UN’s Race to Zero carbon emissions project. They partnered with British electric motor and controller manufacturer YASA and aviation startup Electroflight. The maiden flight was propelled by a 400kw (500hp) electric drivetrain and the densest battery pack ever used on an aircraft. The partners expect that their plane will reach a top speed of 480kph, the fastest electric plane to date. Rolls Royce is working with Norwegian airline, Winderoe to connect their 40 destinations with electric aircraft by 2026.
Competitor, Eviation, hopes that their all-electric aircraft called Alice, will be in service later this year. DHL have ordered 12 of the planes which can carry up to 9 passengers or 1,150 kilos of freight, 800 kilometers with a top speed of 460kpm.
Planet 9
Since Pluto’s demotion from planet to dwarf planet there have only been 8 recognized planets in our solar system. However in recent years astronomers have detected a large gravitational anomaly in the outer reaches of our solar system. This mysterious force is thought to be emanating from a yet to be discovered Planet 9.
The speculation about an unknown planet was driven by the discovery of an atypical clustering of small icy bodies in the outer solar system within the Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is disk like array of objects beyond Neptune. It is similar to the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter however much wider and more massive. Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt (as are other dwarf planets such as Haumea and Makemake).
In a 2016 study, Planet 9 was estimated to be 5 times the mass of earth and roughly 10 times Neptunes’ distance from the sun. Despite these calculations and the estimation of the region in the sky where Planet 9 might exist, there has been no discovery. More recently some astronomers have postulated that Planet 9 is actually a small black hole (they are in the minority however everything must be considered).
A new study has recalibrated the results of the 2016 measurements and again concluded that a planet like object is most likely to exist. Most significantly they found that the likely orbit of the mysterious object is closer to the sun than previously thought. If Planet 9 is real, the massive amount of attention being given to it by astronomers means that it will be discovered. The remaining question will be which Roman (or Greek) God will the planet be named after?
Paying it Forward
If you have a start-up or know of a start-up that has a product ready for market please let me know. I would be happy to have a look and feature the startup in this newsletter. Also if any startups need introductions please get in touch and I will help where I can.
If you have any questions or comments please email me via my website craigcarlyon.com or comment below.
I would also appreciate it if you could forward this newsletter to anyone that you think might be interested.
Till next week.