Renewables are slowly but steadily gaining ground over fossil fuels. But the "last mile is always the toughest" – 50% more electricity is generated today from fossil fuels than 20 years ago! At deMITasse Energies, our goal is to make the last mile for “true” transition to renewables easier and desirable. Several challenges need to be solved before our power grids go green. We believe long-duration energy storage is the missing link that can finally enable our power grids to operate reliably, but with zero emissions. Long-duration energy storage solutions like that of deMITasse’s are key to eliminating over 32% of all greenhouse gases directly emitted by power plants across the globe today. Our larger mission, however, is not limited to curtailing emissions from electricity generation alone, which represents only about 40% of all energy-related emissions. Our technology can be applied to several industries beyond power grids, including steel, cement, chemicals, textiles, sugar, and several others that can benefit immensely from our technology. We strive to eliminate emissions from these energy-intensive industries, which collectively represent over 80% of all anthropogenic emissions.

In pursuit of our goal, we have built and are perfecting our state-of-the-art thermo-chemical cycle that utilizes our proprietary chemicals and catalysts to store various forms of energy within chemical bonds. Chemical bonds are one of the best and most energy-dense ways to store energy. With the added benefit of zero energy dissipation during storage – unless activation energy is provided, stored energy is not released. Fossil fuels are the best example of storing energy within chemical bonds, containing enormous amounts of energy within small volumes, and have stored that energy for millions of years with zero loss. To engineer a machine that works upon this science, we have developed several non-core, but critical, technologies like linear free pistons, nano-coated molecules, high-speed turbines, compact heat exchangers, and advanced thermal management systems that cement all our innovations into one single system capable of storing energy at grid scales for over 24 months with zero energy dissipation, at a cost that is 4-8 times cheaper than any electrochemical battery tech – including lithium-ion – currently available or under development.

In the summer of 2011, three freshly minted engineers laid the foundation for a technology that culminated in the founding of deMITasse Energies. Coming from military families with an innate sense to "do good", the three engineers came together to build something that would help the world become a better place. The urge to make money getting teenagers to click ads on social media or delivering soups before they got cold did not appeal to us, even though the alternative was years of borderline poverty while running a bootstrapped startup in the tough tech industry. Something about being raised in a military family probably gave us the determination and grit to undertake years of self-funded research, despite our uncles’ “well-meaning” incessant advice to instead take up that lucrative job. To this day, albeit unintentionally, the majority of us at team deMITasse come with some military background. We believe this is one of the core strengths at deMITasse Energies that does not need an intellectual property protection strategy.

Beginning as a single fluid system that looked a lot like the Brayton cycle, it took us several iterations to develop the current version of our multi-species cycle. Developing our catalysts and chemicals with the budgetary restraints we had meant teaching ourselves chemical engineering. After four years of electrical engineering, learning alien concepts like heterogeneous catalysis, reaction engineering, and computational chemistry was not particularly easy. But theory is always the easy part. Sorting through thousands of shortlisted chemicals that would potentially suit our cycle was as daunting as the thought of living in a place as expensive as Bombay with a net income of zero. We still wonder how we pulled it off, but we did both. And today we have the first version of our system of working fluid and catalysts that pair perfectly with our thermo-chemical cycle.