Quino Energy is a company that is scaling up an aqueous flow battery that uses specially designed reactants called quinones that are dissolved in water. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Quino Energy, founder and CEO, Eugene Beh to learn more about the company.
Eugene Beh’s Background
What is Eugene Beh’s background? Beh said:
“I’m originally from Singapore — I was born and grew up there and served 2.5 years in the army, as well. I came to the US around 20 years ago, where I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry at Harvard, a Ph.D. in chemistry at Stanford, and then went back to Harvard to do a postdoc on water-based flow battery technology between 2015-2017. Later, I worked at Xerox PARC for 5 years where I invented and commercialized a redox flow desalination technology – which was a very productive period that saw me become PARC’s Most Prolific Inventor for 2020 and 2021. The technology has now been spun out into a separate company called Mojave Energy Systems. Before that happened, I left Xerox PARC to start Quino Energy in 2021 (more on that below).”
“My background is in organic chemistry and then later on, I became interested in electrochemistry. Most others who work on organic flow batteries are the opposite, but I think it’s much harder for an electrochemist to become well-versed in organic chemistry than the other way around.”
Formation Of Quino Energy
How did the idea for the company come together? Beh shared:
I’m not the original inventor of organic flow batteries — that honor falls to Quino’s academic co-founders, Professors Michael Aziz and Roy Gordon at Harvard University. When I was an undergrad at Harvard, I worked as a student researcher at Roy’s lab for three years and then returned to work for both of them as a postdoc after I completed my Ph.D.
“While I was at Stanford doing my Ph.D., the Harvard labs published two high-profile papers on organic flow batteries in Nature and Science that transformed the potential of flow batteries to provide inexpensive and safe energy storage, just in time for the booming demand caused by increased penetration of renewables in the electric grid.
“The researchers soon realized that despite the low cost and high performance, the degradation of organic flow battery reactants was a big barrier to successful commercialization. I came as a postdoc with a mission to figure out why organic flow battery reactants were degrading and how to stop it. We were partially successful in finding molecules with good stability but the process to manufacture the battery reactants was too long, complex, and expensive to be commercially successful.”
“Later, while I was at Xerox PARC, Harvard figured out an easy way to extend the lifetime and even reverse the degradation of organic reactants, which brought more inexpensive but less stable quinones back under consideration. That was when we felt confident enough to launch Quino Energy. I had kept in close touch with my former colleagues at Harvard and when the opportunity came, I left my job at Xerox PARC to start Quino Energy.”
Advice For Others
What advice do you have for others interested in working with water-based flow batteries or innovative renewable energy technology? Beh emphasized:
“The future is really bright for energy storage with surging demand due to the increased adoption of renewable generation. And this is not just because of massive governmental support for batteries – which is true – but primarily because solar and wind generation are simply the cheapest form of electricity generation these days. With more renewables comes more demand for grid battery storage, and this is a megatrend that is now impossible to stop. It’s hard to go wrong when getting into battery storage. There won’t be just one winner since there are so many different battery chemistries for different use cases; lithium-ion (LFP) won’t solve everything, particularly at medium and longer durations of storage.”
“For water-based flow batteries in particular, I predict that there will be a limited future for vanadium, which has a high-cost floor that makes it less and less competitive with LFP batteries (which have been rapidly decreasing in cost). So if you’d like to get into flow batteries, explore one of the new chemistries out there because vanadium is a dead end.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Beh explained:
“Water-based flow batteries are a form of redox flow battery, which stores energy in tanks containing liquid electrolyte solutions. Our core product is our battery active material, also called the electrolyte, which constitutes the majority of the cost of a flow battery system. We currently have a pilot production line in Buffalo NY that converts a dyestuff raw material directly into the battery active material in a zero-waste, continuous flow process. This active material is immediately backward compatible with vanadium flow battery hardware with minimal modification, so we provide the battery active materials to other flow battery OEMs. We also provide DC battery systems with hardware made by other suppliers and our electrolyte.”
“The battery active material is a quarter the cost of vanadium and enables a battery that is 30-40% lower cost than LFP and is completely non-flammable while not using any critical or PFAS materials, and is manufactured locally in the US (and EU, coming soon). Our battery materials have a degradation rate of just 0.17%/year, which is more than 10 times slower than LFP batteries (~2.6%/year) when cycled the same way.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Beh affirmed:
“Among flow batteries, Quino Energy’s battery chemistry does not create any hydrogen gas during cycling, whereas this is a major issue with other kinds like iron-iron, chromium-iron, vanadium, and so on. Hydrogen gas co-production is not just flammable, but introduces a great deal of system complexity because it creates pH imbalances that will cause the system to fail unless all the hydrogen is recaptured and converted back into protons using a fuel cell, or water is oxidized to oxygen in a separate subsystem. Obviously, creating hydrogen and oxygen gases as part of cycling a battery is a big safety hazard.”
“Besides the hydrogen issue, no other company has solved the degradation problem with organic reactants. We also do not use any critical or PFAS materials and the ability to use flow battery hardware originally designed for vanadium allows us to work with existing players to bring products to market rapidly.”
“Next, the battery materials are made locally using cheap and plentiful raw materials that are produced in large quantities all around the world, starting with benzene and xylene all the way upstream. In contrast, 90% of the world’s vanadium supply comes from China and Russia and the annual production is limited. Our material eliminates many of the geopolitical concerns associated with most kinds of flow batteries and even lithium-ion batteries.”
“In addition, the battery materials are uniquely compatible with carbon steel tanks that are currently used to store large volumes of oil or oil products all across the country. We envision further cost reductions on capital costs and installation by repurposing existing oil storage infrastructure for flow batteries. In fact, large tank farms can enable an areal energy density (energy per land area) three times that of LFP batteries, because the battery active materials can use volume effectively, even in the vertical dimension. LFP batteries must be spaced apart laterally and cannot be stacked vertically for safety considerations.”
“Finally, Quino Energy’s batteries enjoy low degradation even when deep cycling the batteries over their entire nameplate capacity. In contrast, vanadium and lithium-ion batteries must be restricted to a maximum of 75% or 80% of maximum capacity in order to control the degradation rate, which for lithium-ion batteries is still 10x faster than ours. This further adds to the true cost of a battery system that is not reflected in the headline cost number – I liken it to ordering a meal at a restaurant that looks cheap and then realizing afterward that they charge a lot of junk fees and expect a big tip on top of everything, versus a restaurant that already includes all fees and taxes in the menu price.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Beh cited:
“This year, we announced that our 100kWh pilot system is operational, which adds to our 24 kWh and two 6 kWh systems running at our lab. All of these use commercial flow battery equipment made by vanadium OEMs that have been commercially deployed elsewhere. At least one of these systems has been powering Quino Energy’s internal facility microgrid for a while now, while the rest of the systems are being put through their paces on a battery cycler. The average American household uses approximately 29 kWh of electricity per day, and with that in mind, Quino’s 100 kWh pilot can supply a home’s entire electricity needs for more than three whole days or three homes for one day – an energy storage capacity roughly equivalent to more than seven fully-charged Tesla Powerwalls combined. Our announcement also highlighted our plans to expand into the European Union, so we’re very excited to see where that takes us.”
“Our company also achieved manufacturing readiness level (MRL) 7 for its first-of-its-kind battery active material pilot production line. This designation confirms that the line is ready for low-rate initial production of Quino Energy’s proprietary quinone battery active material and will catalyze the company’s efforts to rapidly scale its platform for further demonstration and commercialization.”
“In such a short time, Quino Energy has accomplished significant milestones – with the potential for its flow battery chemistry to become a leading technology in the expanding 8-24-hour, mid-duration energy storage market.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Beh concluded:
“Quino Energy’s next big step is to debut several pilot field systems, each between 2- to 10-MWh (megawatt-hour) in capacity, to provide the results needed to gain full certification and product warranty. We’ll have these pilot field systems located all across the US, including California, Texas, and the Midwest. We also hope to have a demonstration using repurposed steel tanks at a port or storage terminal to support local shore operations.”
“Each one of these systems will use our quinone materials as a drop-in replacement for vanadium in field-validated hardware made by conventional vanadium flow battery OEMs. We expect the first of these pilot systems to break ground late this year and be fully operational by 2025.”
