PORTLAND, Ore., U.S. – Portland Roasting Coffee, a Portland-based sustainable coffee roasting company, is on track to become the world’s first self-powered commercial-scale coffee roaster.
The company has made significant investments in technology that will use waste heat generated by the roaster to power all of its electrical needs, with surplus to sell back to the grid.
This will allow the company to double its coffee production capacity while maintaining carbon neutrality. It’s the first time this technology has been utilized in the coffee industry.
Energy Intensive Process Produces Waste Heat
The traditional coffee roasting process relies upon large industrial roasters that utilize blue-flame burners.
This combustion process uses a great deal of energy and produces large amounts of heat. “Waste heat” is a byproduct of manufacturing processes in a wide range of industries. Waste Heat to Power (WHP) technology recovers waste heat before it dissipates and uses it to generate power with no additional combustion or emissions of its own.
Mark Stell, founder and managing partner of Portland Roasting, has been working with Cool Energy Inc., a supplier of a power conversion technology that converts heat into clean electricity.
The power conversion technology developed and supplied by Cool Energy converts waste heat between 150 degrees Celsius and 400 degrees Celsius into clean electricity.
Stell also is working with the Heat is Power Association, a not-for-profit trade group that educates decision makers in manufacturing about using waste heat as a clean, efficient power source.
The group has been pushing for changes to wording in the nation’s tax code to permit companies that want to install WHP systems to access investment tax credits. Currently, incentives in place for renewables don’t apply to technologies for converting waste heat to power.
The Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016, which in April passed the Senate with bi-partisan support, would add WHP technology to the federal definition of renewable energy.
“The next evolution for the coffee roasting industry is to have a built-in power source,” said Stell. “This isn’t wishful thinking. Waste heat to power technology is here, now, and gives almost any manufacturer that generates waste heat, no matter the industry, the ability to self-power their operation.”
Combustion Emissions Also a Factor
The coffee roasting process is not just energy intensive, it also produces large amounts of noxious gas emissions. Afterburners are used to vaporize smoke, converting emissions into clean water vapor and eliminating pollutants released during the roasting process.
However, traditional afterburners use a great deal of additional energy. Portland Roasting dramatically reduced both emissions and energy use when it recently purchased a new Diedrich CR-210 roaster equipped with a catalytic oxidizer, which operates with the same purpose and function as a traditional afterburner, but at about half the temperature and about half the natural gas usage.
Portland Roasting Coffee received a $20,000 incentive from Energy Trust of Oregon, which provides technical assistance and cash incentives for area companies who make qualifying energy-reduction equipment upgrades.
The company expects that, at full utilization, it will be able to power all of its operations and also generate an electricity surplus which, if sold back to the grid, would further reduce its energy costs and reduce the payback on its energy-reduction investments to just four years.
