Engineers and scientists at West Virginia University are creating a complicated hydrogen versatile boiler to assist decarbonize the meals and beverage trade and ultimately get rid of greenhouse fuel emissions.

The expertise, proposed by Hailin Li, professor within the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering on the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, will provide thermal vitality by burning clear gasoline quite than conventional fossil fuels. Researchers may also work with Morgantown companies to attain these targets.

The mission is funded by a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and is one in all 40 such tasks centered on the Biden administration’s aim of attaining net-zero emissions by 2050.

“The food industry is facing the challenge of how to diminish and eventually eliminate CO2 emissions,” Li stated. “If industry leaders really want to achieve that goal by 2050, they have to either burn carbon free clean fuel or consume clean electricity.”

Traditionally, the meals and beverage trade has consumed electrical energy and warmth from fossil fuels — together with pure fuel — which releases greenhouse gases resembling carbon dioxide and methane. In response, Li’s staff has developed a versatile gasoline furnace that may burn pure hydrogen, a cleaner various, to supply sizzling water and steam for product processing.

However, hydrogen isn’t broadly obtainable but, so the furnace also can run on pure fuel or its combination with hydrogen at any ratio. Li stated this flexibility will assist bridge the trade’s transition from fossil fuels to hydrogen because it turns into extra widespread and economically inexpensive.

“The goal is to power a flexible operation with energy utilization efficiency up to 98 percent and nitrogen oxides emissions less than three parts per million,” Li stated. “So when we burn the hydrogen in the food industry, we are going to have zero carbon emissions when hydrogen is produced by consuming green energy.”

In addition, the WVU analysis staff has added to the furnace a part they name the “economizer.”

“The economizer is a device that can recover the waste heat from the exhaust gas,” Li stated. “And that will make the system way more efficient.”

For shut collaboration with the native meals trade, the staff has partnered with Morgantown-based Mountaintop Beverage, an aseptic beverage manufacturing facility that extends the shelf lifetime of dairy merchandise and dairy alternate options utilizing a thermal processing expertise. Beverages are heated to a excessive temperature and bear speedy heating and cooling, which sterilizes the product and extends the shelf life as much as a yr. The facility packages and preps merchandise for shipments to colleges and retailers.

“We want to help our local industry by developing the technology to mitigate their challenges,” Li stated.

Mountaintop Beverage will present WVU with entry to their facility for sampling furnace operation knowledge. They’ll additionally carry out high quality analyses and supply trade enter in regards to the hydrogen boiler expertise because it’s developed and examined.

Kristen Matak, professor of animal and dietary sciences on the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, is aiding Li on the mission. As a meals scientist specializing in value-added meals, meals security and high quality management, she’s within the security and sensory penalties of different processing strategies on milk.

“Whenever there are changes in food processing systems, we must ensure the impacts these changes make on the final product will continue to meet relevant regulatory requirements and good manufacturing practices,” she stated. “My role in this project is to verify the safety and quality of the final product using microbial testing and sensory analysis.”

Matak will work intently with Li to optimize the sterilization course of and decrease the vitality consumption whereas sustaining and enhancing meals high quality.

The merchandise coming off Mountaintop’s traces are shelf steady, sterile and don’t require refrigeration, so processing needs to be environment friendly.

“All those temperatures and flow rates are very important to achieve that, or you’ll have a lot of products wasted,” Matak stated.

WVU will equally be partnering with Morgantown’s Neighborhood Kombuchery. Researchers may also study the beverage manufacturing course of there and establish approaches to scale back vitality consumption and greenhouse fuel emissions.

Other WVU researchers on the mission embrace Slava Akkerman, Songgang Qiu, Kostas Sierros and Xi Yu.

According to Xingbo Liu, affiliate dean for analysis on the Statler College, “This is a great example of multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration. The team includes faculty in both Statler and Davis colleges at WVU, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, GTI Energy and Convergent Science Inc., as well as their industrial partners. WVU recently committed to collaboration with Oak Ridge in the decarbonization areas and this is the first joint project.”