Low Energy Alkalinity
One of the revolutionary breakthroughs that has been made at Calera is the ability to generate sodium hydroxide at higher efficiencies than other competing technologies. Calera’s Low Voltage Base (LVB) process uses an electrochemistry process to split salt to form an alkaline solution and acid at one third to one fifth of the energy of the current state of the art. Anywhere salt and electricity are available we can make alkalinity for the CMAP process. What is unique about the process is that it builds on advances in chlor-alkali and fuel cell design to reduce the electrical requirements for the process. We have demonstrated the continuous operation at laboratory scale and have constructed a 1-ton per day pilot scale system at our facility in Moss Landing. We have teamed with the world’s largest supplier of advanced electrochemical cell components to accelerate the scale up of the technology. Once the pilot scale optimization is complete the process is readily scalable to full scale through the addition of more cell stacks. The product of our process is caustic (sodium hydroxide) and acid (hydrochloric acid). The caustic is used directly in the CMAP process as a source of alkalinity. The acid can be sold for industrial uses, used in oil well or brine production with underground injection or used in the solution mining of minerals that can be used in our process.
