Coolbrook
Assembly Line
Coolbrook heats metal to 1,700°C — while it also tackles global warming
Joonas Rauramo, chief executive of Coolbrook, believes his company has found a way to achieve temperatures of up to 1,700C for industrial processes through a novel form of electrification. “Our sweet spot is above 500C-600C,” he says.
In essence, Coolbrook’s technology reverses conventional turbine theory. For more than a century, coal and other fossil fuels have been burnt to create the heat and kinetic power used to turn turbine-driven generators and power electricity grids. But the start-up’s rotodynamic heaters and reactors turn that process on its head. They use electricity to rotate turbines, which, by forcing a rapid acceleration and deceleration of air or other gases, create violent levels of kinetic energy. This energy can supply the extreme temperatures required by many heavy industrial processes, which cannot normally be achieved by conventional electrification through resistive heaters, because these struggle to exceed a threshold of 500C.