Massachusetts-based AeroShield will use the grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — also known as “America’s moonshot factory” — to build a pilot facility to manufacture transparent aerogels for insulated glass.
NASA has used energy-saving aerogels for decades, but the super-light, solid materials are typically opaque and tinted blue. AeroShield’s patented silica aerogel, developed at MIT, has the transparency of glass, and can be applied to the inner surface of windows and doors to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy performance by up to 65%.
That could help blunt emissions impacts from what is expected to be the largest wave of construction and infrastructure growth in history. Aerogels are now typically deployed only by the space industry, but AeroShield’s product can be used in commercial windows, grocery store freezer doors, ovens, electric vehicle windows and solar thermal energy installations.
Scale up
The grant was one of four totaling $63.5 million awarded by DOE’s Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential, or SCALEUP, program, which provides funding to previous grantees of ARPA-E “that have successfully de-risked their technology and established a viable route to commercial deployment.”
The other awardees include California’s Antora Energy, a thermal battery maker ($14.5 million); Ion Storage Systems in Maryland, an EV battery lithium metal battery maker; and New Jersey-based Queens Carbon, a carbon-neutral cement materials maker.
