Cool Energy gets DOE grant to bring green power to oil and gas fields

Kathleen Lavine | Denver Business Journal

Sam Weaver, president and CEO of Cool Energy.

Cool Energy Inc., a Boulder startup that aims to produce small amounts of electricity from heat that?s normally wasted, has received a $1 million U.S. Department of Energy grant to bring its technology to the nation's oil and gas fields.

Cool Energy said Monday that the Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from DOE will be used to finish designing the "GeoHeart Engine," a small generator capable of producing 20 kilowatts of power, and building a prototype, Cool Energy CEO Sam Weaver said in an interview.

Cool Energy focuses on attaching Stirling engines to sources of waste heat to produce electricity. Stirling engines are an alternative to steam engines and use a gas that?s heated and cooled repeated, so that it expands and contracts repeatedly, to drive a crankshaft to generate electricity.

And there?s a lot of potential power that could be produced if Cool Energy?s generator is attached to an oil and gas well, or a compressor station, Weaver said.

?When a well is drilled you get what you?re after ? oil and gas ? and what?s called ?co-produced fluids? such as water,? Weaver said.

And in some areas of the country, where wells are drilled into pockets of geothermal heat, the oil, gas and water that?s pumped to the surface carries the earth?s heat, which can be used in a Stirling engine to produce electricity, he said.

Wells in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and California ? as well as some locations in Wyoming ? were hot enough, between 200 degrees and 300 degrees Fahrenheit, to be considered for the machine, Weaver said.

That?s based on a previous DOE $150,000 grant to Cool Energy in order to explore its ideas, he said.

Cathy Proctor covers energy, the environment, transportation and construction for the Denver Business Journal and edits the weekly "Energy Inc." newsletter. Phone: 303-803-9233. Subscribe to the Energy Inc. newsletter

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