Zap Energy, an Everett, WA-based provider of Century, a liquid-metal-cooled fusion test platform, raised $130M in Series D funding.
The round was led by Soros Fund Management, with participation from new investors BAM Elevate, Emerson Collective, Leitmotif, Mizuho Financial Group, Plynth Energy and Xplor Ventures. Other investors included Addition, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, DCVC, Energy Impact Partners, Lowercarbon Capital and Shell Ventures.
The company intends to use the funds to continue parallel development of both plasma R&D and systems-level plant engineering and integration, including the next generation in its FuZE device series and a pulsed power capacitor bank.
Led by CEO Benj Conway, Zap Energy is building a low-cost, compact and scalable fusion energy platform that confines and compresses plasma without the need for expensive and complex magnetic coils. Its sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch technology provides compelling fusion economics and requires orders of magnitude less capital than conventional approaches.
Century is designed to simulate plant-like operation by:
- Firing high-voltage pulses of power every ten seconds in a steady sequence for more than two hours (>1,000 pulses at 0.1 Hz).
- Circulating 70 kilograms of hot liquid bismuth in its initial configuration and well over a ton in its final configuration. Air-cooled heat exchangers will remove the intense plasma heat absorbed by the liquid metal.
- Testing critical strategies for mitigating electrode damage due to extreme heat and neutron flux.
Century has already demonstrated a test run of more than 1,000 consecutive plasmas in less than three hours into a chamber lined with flowing liquid metal.
Zap Energy has 150 employees in Seattle and San Diego.
FinSMEs
09/10/2024