Readers with bikes often test the state of their hand pumps by pumping a couple of times with their fingertip placed on stopping the air escaping from the hole at the other end of the pump. If the pump is in prime condition, the tip of your finger will get an instantaneous mild heat burn as the air presses hard against the barrier of your fingertip.
Coolbrook is a Finnish company that is testing an innovative manufacturing process that has a much more powerful pump. They are powerful turbines, (like the type that fly most helicopters) powered by green electricity that spin and force air out of the back of the turbine before hitting a solid block of material. The kinetic energy heats the air up to 500C to 1700C depending on the speed and power of the turbine.
This heat can be used, amongst other uses, in kilns for ceramics, for smelting metals, for cracking up chemical compounds like naphtha, and for cooking cement, etc…
Coolbrook calls their turbine a Roto Dynamic Reactor, or Roto Dynamic Heater (RDH)- a machine that can spin faster than 20,000 revolutions a minute!
The important point to notice is that the process does not use fossil fuels so long as renewables are used as the source to generate electricity. Greenhouse emissions are thus reduced for a whole bunch of manufacturing processes that until now are a significant source of greenhouse gases that pollute our atmosphere.
Coolbrook has been testing their heat turbines in a research facility in Finland and now in the Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Holland.
They have entered into partnership arrangements with some manufacturing giants and raised substantial amounts of new equity capital from professional and trade investors.
Their partners include ABB, Shell, Linde, Cemex, ArcelorMittal, Braskem, SABIC, and a few universities, etc… and the company holds more than 70 patents from their development work.
Investors include Korkia, Corporatum, and other unspecified investors.
Photo: Coolbrook
