U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
DOE's Industrial Technology Validation Pilot Selects Pre-Commercial Technologies and Host Sites to Decarbonize Industry
Validation efforts will explore the viability of emerging industrial decarbonization solutions while mitigating risks of early adoption

Today (Jan 23), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced three selections for Phase II of the Industrial Technology Validation (ITV) pilot. The ITV pilot objectively assesses the performance of emerging decarbonization technologies in industrial environments with a team of DOE National Lab experts. These efforts support and accelerate the deployment of high-impact technologies that will advance decarbonization of the industrial sector, a key pillar to achieving President Biden's goal of a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.

The U.S. industrial sector collectively represents more than 32 percent of the country's total energy consumption and accrues $200 billion in annual energy costs. Companies across the country are prioritizing ambitious sustainability goals to reduce energy, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), water, and waste. While emerging technologies can be integral to achieving these goals, the risks involved in installing and objectively validating performance in high-stakes industrial environments can often impede adoption.

The ITV pilot works to validate innovative energy-, GHG-, water-, and waste-reducing technologies and share the results broadly to help the industrial sector understand the viability of solutions, while mitigating many of the risks associated with being the first to install an emerging technology.

In the first phase of the ITV pilot, five industrial participants were chosen to host field validation testbeds for innovative energy and water treatment technologies under real-world conditions.

Phase II of the ITV pilot adds a new cohort of technologies that:

• Advance industrial decarbonization by reducing GHG emissions. Technologies that reduce energy use, water use, wastewater effluent, and/or waste creation were also considered.
• Qualify as a pre- or early-commercial technology or a commercial technology applied to a new use case.
• Have broad deployment applicability, but are not yet widely used or accepted.

The three selected host sites and technologies are:

• Stryker Corporation (Mahwah, NJ): Stryker Corporation will serve as a host site to validate a high-efficiency switched reluctance motor from Turntide Technologies. Their new design is predicted to use significantly less energy than motors that use variable frequency drives.
• Graphic Packaging International (Augusta, GA): Graphic Packaging International will serve as a host site to validate a shock pulse generator from KEPS SPG Inc. The generator is a boiler cleaning device that can replace existing boiler cleaning technologies such as sootblowers, which burn natural gas to generate steam for cleaning. This technology is expected to use significantly less natural gas and also has the potential to increase boiler efficiency by cleaning more thoroughly than conventional systems, and thereby improving heat transfer in the boiler, lowering GHG plant emissions.
• Holcim Ltd (Alpena, MI): Holcim will serve as a host site to validate a thermoelectric generator for waste heat reclamation from Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems, LLC (ATS). The ATS system aims to use its modular heat-to-power technology to recover and convert previously lost and untapped low temperature waste heat.

The selected technology developers will have the opportunity to gain industry exposure by deploying their technologies in a real-world industrial environment. Performance will be verified by a full-scale measurement and verification (M&V) process led by DOE National Lab experts. A publicly available M&V report will be produced for each validation that can help developers tap into new and existing markets.

Selected host sites will work towards their own decarbonization goals while also creating new opportunities for industry to join in the broader integration of GHG-, energy-, water-, and waste-reducing technologies in the industrial space.

Learn more about the pilot on the Industrial Technology Validation Pilot landing page.

The ITV program is administered by the DOE's Industrial Efficiency & Decarbonization Office (IEDO). IEDO works to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions and increase industrial resource efficiency.