Featured · WebXR
The Volume, in Motion
Tour the Lab
A Three.js scene of the ~10,000 SF lab as it will be built. Walk through it in your browser.
Orbit, zoom, click any of the 19 instruments for an in-line spec card with Emerson product line + purpose + status. Press T for a cinematic tour. Press F for first-person walk mode (WASD + mouse). Tap VR to step inside on Meta Quest or any WebXR-capable device. Equipment glows when running, pulses when in fault. Same code path that wires to Plantweb Insight telemetry in v3.
The Place
The Floor Plan
The lab from above, with 45 field photos.
~10,000 SF Phase 1 footprint on L1 of the Shakopee Shell Space (field-measured 17 Jun 2026: 135'-4" × 112'-4" per floor, ~30,000 SF two-floor envelope). Four zones: glovebox NW / cycler NE / wet SE / CHO+break SW. Field documentation: 45 photos including the actual posted Storage Request Form, the reserved Irvine IT space, the perimeter windows.
The Method
The Lab Manual
The bench-grade procedure.
18 sections, 92 cells, four C-rates, twelve-month timeline. Hex-TADD-COP synthesis, electrolyte preparation (4.0M & saturated 5.8M tested), Byproduct & Recovery Strategy, Energy Budget. The canonical Phase 1 success-criteria table — tiered kill floor / target / stretch — lives here and is quoted by every other document.
Asked & Answered
FAQ
~80 questions across 7 sections.
Every question Connor asked himself, and every question a reviewer might. Each gets three layers: the one-sentence headline, the plain-English version, and the full engineering case. “I asked” badges mark questions that became proposal improvements. If a reviewer raises any objection, this page probably already answers it — in three depths.
Learn the science
The Reading Textbook
Twelve chapters. The chemistry, the cell, the cycle, the kill modes — university-style, tight.
A short textbook that teaches the aqueous magnesium-ion battery from first principles. What a battery is, why lithium burns, what changes when water is the electrolyte, why magnesium, what a Prussian-blue analogue does, how a single cycle works, why 120,000 cycles is possible, and what could kill it. Built to read in 25 minutes and to be pitchable from memory after.
Ops & Maintenance
The Operations Manual
How the lab runs. Built for the floor.
Six role cards with daily/weekly/monthly responsibilities. Three zone walkthroughs. The Ventilation Envelope (ACH, pressure cascade, recombiner, daylight + glazing, occupant amenity). 30-year service schedule. Twelve emergency procedure cards. 13 cited regulatory standards. Reference, not pitch. Read after the proposal lands — the manual proves the lab is real before it exists.
Companion wiki
The Glossary
Every acronym, instrument, and concept — in plain English.
The proposal is dense with science-coded language: kVA, PXI, ICP-OES, NaOCl detox, NMP solvent, DeltaV, CuFe-PBA, Hex-COP, MgCl2, LCOS, BaaS, VCM, IBC, NFPA 2/55/70, OSHA PSM, ACH, Δp, K-13, AHJ. Every term gets a plain-English definition you can read in 20 seconds. Across the rest of the hub, look for dotted underlines — click any term to get the popover. Wave 30 Phase 2 ships 100 entries. Phase 3 expands toward ~150-200.
Beyond Phase 1
The long game — and the world outside the proposal.
Two ways to keep the argument current: what Emerson could build in Carlsbad in 2028, and what the rest of the world is publishing this week.
The long game
The Carlsbad Play
Phase 4: vertical integration on the brownfield next to the largest desal plant in North America.
~492 metric tons of magnesium discharged unrecovered to the Pacific every day. 95 acres of brownfield directly adjacent. The honest carbon math, the five conditions for net-negative per kWh delivered, the ~$100–200M federal + CA incentive stack, and the named gaps. Gated on Phase 1–3 success. No Phase 1 capital committed. The long game named out loud.
Beyond the battery
The Capability Portfolio
Five markets that don’t need the battery to work — and two with genuine humanitarian weight.
Emerson’s real asset is capability, not chemistry ownership. Automated high-purity salt purification (pharma / food / drinking-water remineralization), poly-mineral brine recovery (Cu / B / Li / K / Ba / Sr), desal-brine remediation, battery-materials QA that works for every chemistry, and brine-validated instrumentation. Full byproduct-handling table with hazard class + buyer. Patent-with-a-purpose IP posture (Tesla-pledge model). The floor under the floor. The substance behind the option-value ask.
The honest downside
If the Battery Fails
Every way this can fail — and what’s still standing when it does.
The science fallback ladder (mixed → Ca-rich → pure-Ca → pure-Mg, never a cliff), the stage-by-stage gate map (what survives if Chen doesn’t reproduce, if mixed-valent fails, if Track B misses, if scale-up hits a wall), and the bounded-downside map (five sellable capabilities remain even in the worst case). The literal receipt for $1.8M = option, not gamble. Priced at under 1% of the worst-case revenue floor.
