2023 Awardees

Artyc PBC is developing a battery-powered cooling container offering a refrigerant-free alternative for shipping and storing temperature-sensitive medical and agricultural shipments. The containers maintain a 1°C temperature stabilization and can maintain temperatures as low as -5°C for five days. Tests show they are potentially reusable for hundreds of shipments, replacing the need for wasteful single-use packaging. Initial demonstrations will focus on transporting medical products such as blood plasma with the potential for scaling up to shipping specialty foods produced by agricultural growers. Artyc's Rocket Fund award will accelerate technology development from early field demonstration and system refinements completion (TRL 6) to complete system demonstration in an operational environment (TRL 7), including completion of the all-important CE certification.

Carbon0Grids is this year's Moonshot winner with Microgrid OS, developed at Caltech as a universal platform for planning and operating microgrids. Microgrid OS is adaptable to a range of customer applications as a plug-and-play solution that limits the re-engineering currently needed for each project. This system operates as a software orchestration layer that links the hardware (e.g., batteries, PV, building loads) with applications (e.g., resilience, peak shaving, carbon footprint reduction). The company has deployed its first testbed at a university campus to validate the system's control and optimization algorithms.

C-Quester, Inc. C-Quester, Inc. uses inexpensive and non-toxic granular metal carbonate (GMC) sorption technology to efficiently capture more than 95% of the CO2 emitted from post-combustion point-sources at below the current tax credit of $85/ton CO2 captured. This brings new revenues and accessible carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to power plants, factories, and other CO2 point sources. The Rocket Fund grant will pay for the engineering and services to build a carbon dioxide validation process (CVP) Centennial" at 100-ton CO2/year.

Delphire, Inc.The company's wildfire detection system provides AI - driven monitoring to detect and report fires in the earliest, incipient phase using visual images for rapid human confirmation. It leverages multiple sensor combinations (visible/IR images, air quality, and environment data) through edge-based AI to analyze sensor data and detect smoke or flames in seconds. This combination enables Delphire to remain fully functional even in remote areas where only satellite connectivity and limited solar power is available. The company's market will be powerline monitoring (utilities) and community protection (Wildland-Urban Interface). The Rocket Fund award will enable piloting the system in an operating environment at two test sites in Northern and Southern California

EVmatch, Inc. The company's latest product, the EVmatch Adapter, is a device that provides electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) with networking capabilities that enable real-time monitoring, control, reporting, and diagnostics. Built on technology licensed from Argonne National Laboratory, the EVmatch Adapter is brand agnostic and SAE J1772™-compatible. It provides utilities with a one-size-fits-all solution to transform existing and future Level 2 EVSE into smart devices – an increasingly important element in unlocking demand-side management resources and allowing for increased renewable energy integration. The Rocket Fund award will enable design finalization for manufacturing and development of four production-grade prototypes for UL testing.

H3 Energy LLC (Ammobia) is an early-stage start-up developing a process to enable green ammonia production at low cost. Through an innovative ammonia separation method and process design, ammonia is produced at 10x lower pressure (20 bar vs 200 bar) than the conventional process. By significantly reducing the cost and increasing the flexibility of the process, Ammobia enables cost-effective ammonia production from renewable energy. With Ammobia, ammonia users can produce clean ammonia onsite instead of importing costly fossil-fuel-based ammonia. This comes with cost and safety advantages. Ammobia will leverage the Rocket Fund to purchase essential parts and equipment to accelerate its technology towards an integrated tech demonstrator.

Hearth Labs is a VC-backed climatetech startup that makes Q Sense, a thermal-LiDAR sensor and analysis platform used to improve energy efficiency and occupant thermal comfort in the built environment. Q Sense generates detailed thermal digital twins in minutes, accurately models heat transfer, uncovers opportunities to improve building performance, and designs effective retrofit projects. The company will use the Rocket Fund award to perfect the sensor and analysis software for residential buildings and lay the foundation for pilot tests in single-family homes.

Mars Materials, Inc. PBC A recipient of a Breakthrough Energy Fellowship, Mars is commercializing NREL-developed nitrilation, to produce acrylonitrile (AN) from captured CO2 and biomass. AN is the primary input for acrylamide (AMD) and carbon fiber (CF). Compared to the incumbent process, nitrilation has fewer process emissions and can help minimize price instability, petrochemical consumption, toxic byproducts and safety concerns. Each ton of AN that Mars produces via nitrilation avoids 1.04 tons of CO2e and utilizes 0.83 tons of captured CO2. Mars' AN has the potential to enable new carbon fiber markets in decarbonization applications - including vehicle lightweighting, hydrogen storage and building materials. Mars is working to scale up the process and optimize it for cost and carbon efficiency. The Rocket Fund award will enable the purchase, installation and calibration of analytical equipment for product quality assurance in samples sent to AMD and CF manufacturers for commercial validation.

SunGreenH2 Pte Ltd. The company has developed a platform technology based on proprietary nanostructured materials for "supercharging" all electrolyzer technologies with its higher water-splitting capability and anti-corrosion properties. The company has developed core components for all major types of electrolyzer cells, stacks and systems. Alkaline, PEM, AEM and Membrane-free electrolyzers made with SunGreenH2's electrodes and hardware components double (2x) hydrogen production using 30x lower precious metals and 10% lower energy, thus reducing the levelized cost of deploying green hydrogen in industry, power production, transport and energy storage. The company's next step will be to validate its prototype in the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab test facilities and pilot its technology with partners in California.