Your next Heineken beer may be brewed with steam from a 100MWh heat battery

Brewing beer can be a highly polluting activity because gas boilers are normally used to create the enormous volumes of steam required for the process. Now, Heineken is teaming with a battery and electric company on a new solution at its Lisbon, Portugal brewery. They're building a 100MWh grid- and solar-powered heat battery that will generate the steam while reducing carbon emissions, Heineken announced. 

Heat batteries use materials like ceramics to store and then release heat, much as a regular battery stores and releases electricity. Heineken's brewery will employ a Rondo Heat Battery (RHB) built with refractory bricks that capture heat, then convert it to steam. When completed, it will be powered...