What is the BlueInvest Project Pipeline?
See our showcase of innovative projects and entrepreneurs who are shaping the Blue Economy.
Projects consist of innovative, scalable and sustainable business ventures from traditional and emerging sectors of the maritime economy.
The graphs below provide an overview of the country distribution, sector, and TRL of projects currently listed in the BlueInvest Project Pipeline.
Selection Criteria:
Your company is EU-based or from an eligible sea basin region (Georgia, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Mauritania, United Kingdom, or Norway)
Your project TRL is 4 or higher
Your project sector is in one of the 10 blue economy sectors identified for this initiative
Your solution has a clear sustainable impact on the blue economy
Your project is looking for investment
Project Country
Country in which the project is being developed and / or implemented.
Project Sector
Main blue economy sector the project relates to.
Project TRL
Current technology readiness level of the project.
AquaBattery
Dr. ir. Jiajun Cen is the CEO and co-founder of AquaBattery. He has a background in chemical engineering and is an expert in the field of physical transport phenomenon in porous media. He obtained his PhD degree from the prestigious Imperial College London, where he worked carbon capture and storage in saline aquifers. He is interested and has experience with hydrogen fuel cells, photocatalytic reactors, nuclear fusion reactors, renewable energy powered water desalination technologies as well as eco-friendly battery technologies. He has several patents and has obtained various personal awards. Furthermore, he is a listee on Forbes 30 Under 30 in the category “Manufacturing & Industry”. The other co-founders are Emil Goosen, David Vermaas, Jan Post and Jan-Willem van Egmond. All the founders combined displays an impressive track record of both business development and research.
AquaBattery develops eco-friendly, cost-effectively scalable, and safe electrical energy storage technologies. Their flagship products are the BlueBattery and GreenBattery, which can store excess renewable energy in saltwater.
In short, AquaBattery has the following technologies to offer.
BlueBattery: storage of electricity in concentration gradients of fresh and saltwater. GreenBattery: storage of electricity in concentration and pH gradients.
TerraBattery: storage of electricity in nickel-iron cells with an expected service life of 20+ years. At the end of life, this battery is fully recycled.
AquaBattery provides eco-friendly, cost-effectively scalable, and safe energy storage technologies to help accelerate the energy transition to 100% renewable energy without the need of significantly upgrading the PowerGrid connections.
Customers can increase their self-consumption of renewable energy that they generate locally without being limited by the grid connection. They can, for instance, choose to pay less by opting for a lower capacity grid connection. The excess energy obtained during peak production periods (e.g. from solar PV), that cannot be readily supplied to the grid as a result of the limitation, can be stored and delivered to the grid when the grid connections allow it i.e. during the night. AquaBattery endorses local generation and consumption of renewable energy. Thus, the key problems that we are addressing are: (1) help customers install more renewable energy generation capacity (e.g. putting more solar panels) without being limited by the PowerGrid and (2) increase self-consumption of renewable energy.
What is unique about our flagship products is that it can store renewable energy that is required to bridge a period with low solar and wind energy output (i.e. the Dunkelflaute) in a cost-effective manner. Namely, we can increase the storage capacity independently from the power unit. Dunkelflaute last typically 12 days and conventional batteries technologies such as those based on lead acid and lithium would become unaffordable at this scale and also unsafe.