It is one of the most pressing issues in the industry right now: The current gas crisis is driving leading companies to switch from gas to renewable energy sources faster. The German Scale-Up Kraftblock will replace gas in a food factory from PepsiCo, one of the biggest food producers, in cooperation with the Dutch energy supplier Eneco. Clean power from Eneco and a high-temperature storage system from Kraftblock will decarbonize the process heat of the snack plant. In the first step, the frying process will be decarbonized. Soon, the whole plant will follow. This heat storage will be implemented in PepsiCo’s factory in Broek op Langedijk,
north of Amsterdam. 
The system will replace the gas-fired boiler to avoid fossil fuels and save emissions. The integrated storage will have a capacity of 70 MWh and thus be the biggest commercial high-temperature energy storage in the world.It supplies the factory with nine megawatts of thermal power. In the near future, three more storage modules
are planned to be added in order to decarbonize the whole factory.
“Building this plant makes a huge impact on the decarbonization of the industry. PepsiCo wanted to replace their gas-fired processes and we offer the solution for that. We are very glad that we can cut emissions here and do our part to enable the energy transition”, says Kraftblock’s CEO Dr. Martin Schichtel.

Reduction of 51 percent of the emissions 
Eneco and PepsiCo have very ambitious climate targets. For both companies, this project is the first industrial electrification project with a high-temperature storage in the Netherlands. It is also the first electrification project in the Dutch food industry of this type.
Thanks to two modules of Kraftblock’s Net-Zero Heat System, PepsiCo in Broek op Langedijk can reduce more than 8,500 tons of CO2 per year in a first step which is a reduction of 51 percent. This avoids approximately 4.500.000 m³ of natural gas per year. The goal is to install three additional storage modules and to reduce the
CO2 emissions of the plant by 98 percent.

The system at PepsiCo will contain a power-to-heat element that converts wind power into heat at 800°C. Two storage modules with a capacity of 35 MWh each enable the full flexibility of storing and using the energy within the day-to-day cost and operation environment. The adoption process to the requested temperature level is also included in the Net-Zero Heat System: In this case, thermal oil is heated and brought to the frying stations where it is used to heat the frying oil. The planned system of five storage
units aims to decarbonize the whole food factory.

Unique technology replaces fossil fuels in the industry Kraftblock’s Net-Zero Heat System can be applied in countless producing industries: from food, paper and rubber to plastics, steam processes in the chemical industry to several applications in the metal, non-ferrous metals and ceramic industry. This provides huge decarbonization possibilities to the industrial sector, making gas and other fossil fuels obsolete.
Kraftblock uses a special material to store energy: in years of scientific development, a material was invented that contains up to 85 percent recycled components without any rare earths or resources. The material has a lifetime of at least 15,000 storage cycles.