Echogen Power Systems (formerly rexorce Thermionics, Inc.), headquartered in Akron, Ohio, was formed in 2007 to develop and commercialize an innovative waste heat recovery system. Echogen's technology transforms waste heat directly into clean, emission-free electricity.
Echogen's Thermafficient® energy recovery systems, inspired by a patented absorption heat pump developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, utilize supercritical carbon dioxide (ScCO2) and a range of combination fluids to create a power generating cycle in applications as broad as bottom cycling in gas turbines, industrial waste heat recovery, solar thermal, geothermal, and hybrid alternatives to the internal combustion engine. Additional patent-pending technologies developed by Echogen enable the system to operate using a broader range of heat sources to satisfy a wider range of applications that competing technologies cannot address. Our first prototype, completed in 2007, was an absorption heat pump using carbon dioxide and a preferred secondary fluid. Echogen built what NASA conceived: an absorption cycle in which carbon dioxide was absorbed into a secondary fluid to improve energy efficiency at the pump. It reduced to practice our approach to power generation. A second 5 kW prototype system, completed in early 2009, used pure carbon dioxide and proved that a transcritical cycle heat engine could be built to produce electricity from waste heat for commercial applications and established a development pathway for first production units. A 15 kW pilot scale system currently operates in our engineering laboratory to support product development, demonstration unit testing, and system scale-up activities. During 2009, a 250 kW demonstration unit was also designed and built, and is currently completing beta-testing at a Midwest electric utility. Following successful testing and grid connection, the unit will be deployed in an industrial setting for long term endurance testing and optimization. Design efforts are now underway to develop a 6MWe - 8+MWe demonstration project. Additional long term demonstration and commercial installation projects are currently in the planning stages.