I’ve heard of hybrid cars. Now learn about the hybrid cement plant.

You’ve no doubt heard about hybrid cars, but what about a hybrid cement or glass plant? That probably won’t happen, because almost all of them today run on fossil fuels. But that may soon change, as one startup has developed a way to integrate electric heat into existing facilities. Like a hybrid car, it allows companies to save money while using less fossil fuels.

“We are hybridizing industrial processes,” said Carlos Ceballos, co-founder and CEO National Oil Energy CompanyTechCrunch said. “Most companies are ready for electrification, but they don’t want to get off fossil fuels yet. In the energy transition, they want to have the opportunity to choose the lowest cost.”

NOC has developed a form of electric heating that can be installed in existing fossil fuel-powered facilities. Heat from its system can be transferred to a glass furnace or to various parts of the cement production process. If the cost of electricity rises, the operator can turn off the NOC equipment and rely solely on fossil fuels.

Perhaps most importantly, the startup can provide heat at temperatures up to 1,200 degrees Celsius, and Ceballos said the company is working to reach 1,500 degrees Celsius. These temperatures would have been difficult to achieve with anything other than fossil fuels or hydrogen, the latter of which is currently expensive in its non-polluting form. There are not many participants in this field yet – Startup Battlefield alumni Electrified thermal solutions It stands out as a potential contender.

NOC recently raised a $2.7 million seed round, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The round was led by 360 Capital with participation from SOSV and Desai VC.

Early NOC customers will likely opt for the hybrid format, although they won’t have to if they don’t want to. The NOC system can store heat for hours on end, allowing companies to use more electricity when the price is cheap — such as when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining — and to rely on stored heat when the price is high.

There are some elements in the NOC system that make hybridization and arbitrage in electricity prices possible. The first is the induction heating element, which is similar in concept to the induction hobs installed in kitchens around the world. Induction heaters use metal coils, usually made of copper, to produce magnetic fields when electricity passes through them. These magnetic fields cause atoms of some nearby metals, such as steel, to vibrate rapidly, generating heat.

In the NOC system, inductive coils operate on steel pellets packed inside large ceramic containers 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) wide. The containers are wrapped with heat-inducing copper coils and heat-preserving insulation. When heat is needed, electricity flows through the copper and warms the steel balls. The air blown through the balls extracts heat and delivers it to the desired location, such as a glass kiln or part of a cement plant.

Now, the NOC’s approach isn’t the only way to make heat this hot using electricity. Resistive heaters, similar to those found in toasters, can get the job done. But the higher the temperature, the shorter its lifespan. At 1,000 degrees Celsius, specialized resistance heaters only last about 12 months, Ceballos said. At 1,200 degrees Celsius, this drops to three months, he added.

NOC’s heating elements – copper coils – completely avoid this problem because they never come into contact with the heat they generate. That’s the beauty of induction heating, where the coils are embedded in half a meter (about 20 inches) of insulation, and remain at room temperature while sending their electromagnetic waves inward to the steel balls.

The insulation is thick enough that the NOC system can store heat for hours on end. The startup can size the system based on how long a customer wants to store heat. For longer periods, NOC will stack more container units on top of each other and fill them with more steel balls.

The startup has run a refrigerator-sized pilot system for 15,000 hours so far, and has built two much larger pilot systems, one for a glass manufacturer and one for a cement production company, both in France. These systems are supposed to be operational in May.

“Being hybrids allows them to take risks for the future,” Ceballos said. “Given today’s geopolitical problems, it is very attractive.”