Earth needs more energy. Atlanta’s Super Soaker creator may have a solution.
The old warehouse strip reborn as the Lee + White development is a popular destination for anyone seeking a bite or a beverage on the Atlanta Beltline’s Westside Trail. But steps from the breweries and eateries inhabiting much of the space, serious science is taking place.
In an industrial space at the complex’s north end, engineers in blue lab coats huddle over circuit boards. Scientists test how certain films and other materials respond to pressure, heat and more. And in a machine shop off the main lab, a computer-controlled machine mills custom components from raw metal.
The space is a hive of activity, one that exudes the spirit of experimentation embodied by its founder, the legendary inventor Lonnie Johnson.
Johnson isn’t a household name like Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell. You’ll be hard-pressed, however, to find a child of the 1990s who isn’t familiar with his most famous invention: the Super Soaker. The ubiquitous water gun has produced an estimated $1 billion in sales over its lifetime.
“Inventing, for me anyway, is looking for a good problem to tackle,” Johnson said.
At 76, the prolific inventor is not done hunting for solutions, and he believes the one his team is refining steps from the Beltline — the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter, or JTEC — could be his most significant yet.
Johnson and outside experts say the JTEC is a “novel” energy device. It’s not a battery or a fuel cell, and it doesn’t fit neatly into other conventional categories.
What it is, Johnson thinks, is a potential key to unlock a huge power source that’s rarely utilized today: waste heat. At the same time, he thinks it could help humanity slow climate change and meet its seemingly insatiable need for more electricity.
It’s still relatively early days for the company, but Johnson and other JTEC executives think the future is bright — if they can clear the hurdles that come with scaling any first-of-its-kind technology.
Capturing waste heat
A trained nuclear engineer, Johnson served in the Air Force and later worked on NASA’s Galileo mission. A lifelong inventor, he has more than 140 patents to his name and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2022.
Energy issues have been a driving force behind Johnson’s innovations for years. In fact, an “aha” moment working on a more efficient heat pump — a type of home heating and cooling system — is what led to the Super Soaker.
In the late 1980s, while experimenting at home with new nozzles he’d fashioned, he shot a stream of water across his bathroom.
“I thought, you know, a high-performance water gun would be a lot of fun,” Johnson said.
The idea for the JTEC wasn’t quite as spontaneous. It was born about 20 years ago, while Johnson was researching solid state batteries — an intense focus of automakers and other industries to this day.
The JTEC has few moving parts, no combustion and no exhaust. All the work to generate electricity is done by hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe.
Inside the device, pressurized hydrogen gas is separated by a thin, filmlike membrane, with low pressure gas on one side and high pressure gas on the other. The difference in pressure in this “stack” is what drives the hydrogen to compress and expand, creating electricity as it circulates. And unlike a fuel cell, it does not need to be refueled with more hydrogen.
All that’s needed to keep the process going and electricity flowing is a heat source. As it turns out, there are enormous amounts of energy vented or otherwise lost from industrial facilities like power plants, factories, breweries and more.
Between 20% and 50% of all energy used for industrial processes is dumped into the atmosphere and lost as waste heat, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
‘Power … from just about anywhere’
The JTEC works with high temperatures, but the device’s ability to generate electricity efficiently from low-grade heat sources is what company executives are most excited about.
Inside JTEC’s headquarters, engineers show off a demonstration unit that can power lights and a sound system with water that’s roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit — below the boiling point and barely warm enough to brew a cup of tea, said Julian Bell, JTEC’s vice president of engineering.
Comas Haynes, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute specializing in thermal and hydrogen system designs, agrees the company could “hit a sweet spot” if it can capitalize on lower temperature heat. Haynes is not affiliated with JTEC.
For Johnson, the potential application he’s most excited about lies beneath our feet.
Geothermal energy exists naturally in rocks and water beneath the Earth’s surface at various depths. Tapping into that resource through abandoned oil and gas wells — a well-known access point for underground heat — offers another opportunity.
“You don’t need batteries and you can draw power when you need it from just about anywhere,” Johnson said.
Right now, the company is building its first commercial JTEC unit, which is set to be deployed early next year. Mike McQuary, JTEC’s CEO and the former president of the pioneering internet service provider MindSpring, said he couldn’t reveal the customer, but said it’s a “major Southeast utility company.”
“Crossing that bridge where you have commercial customers that believe in it and will pay for it is important,” McQuary said.
‘Horse race’
The challenge for JTEC, as for all startups, is whether the company can control costs as it scales its product.
It took decades for renewables like wind and solar to bend their respective cost curves to compete with fossil fuels. McQuary said the company can’t wait that long, and its focus now is on sourcing the specialized materials it needs, while it works to drive down cost.
Haynes from Georgia Tech said he’s “generally optimistic” about the JTEC, especially if it can find ways to put low-quality heat to good use.
“The lower the temperature it can accommodate, the more novel it will be,” he said.
On top of some initial seed money, the company brought in $30 million in a Series A funding in 2022 — money that allowed the company to move to its Lee + White headquarters and hire more than 30 engineers. McQuary said it expects to begin another round of fundraising soon.
Johnson, meanwhile, hasn’t stopped working on new inventions.
He continues to refine the design for his solid-state battery — the one that spawned the JTEC. Solid-state batteries have long been considered the “holy grail” for battery makers, offering more range in electric vehicles, shorter charging times and improved safety.
Watching his battery venture progress alongside JTEC has been like a “horse race,” Johnson said. He’s still not sure which one will cross the finish line first.
“I‘ve got teams for both technologies now,” Johnson said. “Sometimes, one is ahead of the other in getting to commercialization … but it’s fun watching them solving their own problems in their individual space.”
A note of disclosure
This coverage is supported by a partnership with Green South Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. You can learn more and support our climate reporting by donating at AJC.com/donate/climate.
About the Author
Drew Kann is a reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covering climate change and environmental issues. His passion is for stories that capture how humans are responding to a changing environment. He is a proud graduate of the University of Georgia and Northwestern University, and prior to joining the AJC, he held various roles at CNN.
