$2.75 Million DOE Grant Awarded for Energy Research

$2.75 Million DOE Grant Awarded for Energy Research

By Victoria Birk Hill November 19, 2024

MHT director, Jamal Yagoobi, is leading this exciting new CARD research that will drastically cut emissions and energy use.

We are thrilled to report that founding CARD director, Jamal Yagoobi, along with his research team have been awarded a $2.75 million U.S. Department of Energy grant to drastically cut emissions and energy use in industrial drying.

“We are all excited about this — this is potentially a groundbreaking technology,” said Yagoobi. His team has been working on ways to dry paper, pulp, and other materials using the concentrated energy found in lasers. The lasers Yagoobi’s team uses are not the lasers of the public imagination. Though the lasers are quite strong — they can melt metal — they are dispersed over a larger area, spreading out the energy to evenly and gently dry the target material.

“For paper, it’s important to make sure the tensile strength is not degrading,” Yagoobi said. “For food products, you want to make sure the color and sensory qualities do not degrade.”

Therefore, before the system is ready for a commercial pilot, the team has to gather a lot more data about how much laser energy is incident on different parts of the surface and how deeply the energy penetrates different materials. Once gathered, this data will be used to determine what system sizes and operating conditions are best for different materials, and to design laser modules for each intended use.

Once these details are worked out, the laser technology can be installed in new commercial-scale drying equipment or existing systems. “This particular technology will be easy to retrofit,” Yagoobi said.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, industrial sources were responsible for about 1.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States in 2023, about 28% of the country’s overall emissions. It is why the work Yagoobi and his team are working on is critical for improving energy use in industrial manufacturing.

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