Firebricks have been part of humanity’s technological arsenal for at least three millennia, since the era of the Hittites. Created with special heat-resistant clays fired at high temperatures, firebricks can withstand temperatures of up to 1,600 °C. Now a proposal from MIT researchers shows that this ancient invention could play a key role in helping the world shift away from fossil fuels.
The idea is to store excess electricity produced when demand is low—for example, from wind farms at night—by using electric resistance heaters, the same kind found in electric ovens or clothes dryers, which convert electricity into heat. The devices would use the excess electricity to heat up a large mass of firebricks, which can retain the heat for many hours, given sufficient insulation. Later, the heat could be used directly for industrial processes, or it could feed generators that convert it back to electricity.
The technology itself is old, but its usefulness in this context is due to the rapid recent rise of intermittent renewable energy sources and the peculiarities of the way electricity prices are set. Technologically, the system “could have been developed in the 1920s, but there was no market for it then,” says Charles Forsberg, SM ’71, ScD ’73, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and lead author of a recent research paper describing the plan.
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