On the side of a highway in the woods of New Hampshire, a small group of engineers is quietly working on an advanced heat pump inspired by rockets, satellites, and more.
Evari emerged from stealth on Tuesday with core technology related to rocket turbomachinery. The goal is to extend the range of electric vehicles by tens of miles while also pushing natural gas out of the home heating business.
Heat pumps use electricity to move heat energy from one place to another and tend to be much more efficient than traditional space heating. Home heating involves extracting heat from the outside air and bringing it indoors to keep occupants warm. Refrigerators draw heat from internal compartments to keep food cool. Global sales of heat pumps have seen double-digit growth in recent years, but this is not enough to put the world on track to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the IEA said.
Currently, air source heat pumps are not used in large areas of the world. This is because air source heat pumps don't work as well when mercury decreases. Most of these locations still rely on natural gas or kerosene, and convincing people to make the switch will require drop-in solutions that are cheaper to run than existing furnaces and boilers and can operate in extreme temperatures. . The basic technology inside cars and homes hasn't changed in more than a century, but it still doesn't work well at low temperatures.
“Let's say it's minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit in Minnesota and you have a forced baseboard hot water heater,” Walker says. “No heat pump on the market can achieve this at any temperature, much less at extremely cold temperatures.”
But that's exactly the kind of system Evari ultimately targets. Its turbomachinery is useful when large temperature differences must be bridged. That might mean extracting heat from a cold Minnesota night to heat your home, or it might mean releasing heat from an EV truck's refrigerated container into a hot Miami afternoon. Evari has not yet revealed its target market, but Walker said it is targeting transportation first.
Additionally, researchers found that the refrigerants used in most heat pumps are either strong greenhouse gases or can permanently break down into chemicals.
Evari's turbo-powered heat pumps use refrigerants such as propane, which have an extremely low global warming potential. No lubricating oil is required. It may seem strange to emphasize this, but it is difficult to design oils that work well at both ends of the spectrum and blend well with heat pump refrigerants. Evari co-founder and CEO Steve Walker told TechCrunch that oil-free heat pumps can operate more efficiently over a wide range of temperatures.
If Evari can bring heat pumps to market at a cost competitive with existing options, it could be a game-changer for a wide range of industries. Heat pumps are used not only to heat and cool homes and vehicles, but also to generate heat for industrial processes, dehumidify buildings, and keep food cold in grocery stores.
Walker self-funded the early stages of development using a small windfall from the sale of a previous waste-to-fuel startup. As a result, Everly was able to eliminate many of its technical risks, Walker said. So the company announced a $7.5 million seed round today, which is way ahead of most seed-stage companies. The round was led by Clean Energy Ventures, with participation from angels Farvatn Venture and Clean Energy Venture Group.
Evali's compressor manufacturing process will likely cost more than existing designs, but it should be cheaper overall because it requires less material, Walker said. “For example, for the same amount of cooling or heating power, copper and rare earth materials are less than 5%,” he said. The company's turbo compressors range in size from as small as a dime to slightly larger than a quarter. Despite spinning hundreds of thousands of revolutions per minute, it is virtually silent and vibration-free, he added.
By trading material costs for additional manufacturing costs, Evari's materials-focused approach positions the company to protect itself from the growing geopolitical tensions that are forming around critical minerals. Much of it is mined and processed in China or passes through Chinese-owned companies, so the U.S. government has made it a priority to cut off as much of the domestic mineral supply chain as possible.
At the same time, U.S. industrial policy has begun to favor domestic manufacturing. In February, the Biden administration announced that it would spend $63 million from the Defense Production Act specifically to boost manufacturing of heat pumps.
The timing couldn't have been better for Evari. It's he at the confluence of three big trends. All that remains is to bring ultra-high-speed compressors into production in time to catch up with the wave of heat pump adoption.