STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 17 powered equipment attractive to coffee roasting companies that want to reduce their carbon footprint and improve their sustainabil- ity indicators. To find out about using hydrogen to roast coffee, STiR spoke with Thomas Koziorowski, who is Probat's chief technology officer and one of the world's leading experts on coffee science. How did you think of hydrogen as a roasting fuel source? It was in 2020. Probat aims to be the market's technology leader, so we are always looking for new possibilities. At that time, the engineering and research focus was all about "new fuels," and we wanted to experiment. We wondered, would hydrogen really work with coffee? And pretty soon, we had our proof-of-concept. We weren't thinking so much about energy consumption or energy prices. That concern came later, with Europe's energy crisis and price spike, in 2022. Can the customer use their existing roast profiles with the hydrogen system? That was our target, and that's what we have done. You can use exactly the same roasting profiles, whether your roaster is heated by natural gas or electricity or hydrogen. The adjust- ment will be done automatically by the roaster control system. What about roast time? Does a hydrogen burner transfer heat to the beans faster or slower than a natural gas or electric system? There's not really a difference. Of course, as for the burner itself, the flame is different than with natural gas. We designed the system to get the right mixture of fuel and oxygen so that when the heat stream enters into the roaster, the heat transfer is exactly the same. And that's why we produce exactly the same roast curves. You get the same parameters with hydro- gen, and the same results. Is there any difference in taste? The P05 shop roaster system has been up and running at our headquarters in Emmerich, Germany for several months now, and customers have been coming and trying it out. And the feedback from them is always the same: there is no taste difference. The Hydrogen Economy How War is Helping Decarbonize Your Coffee One unexpected outcome of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a big, new push to decarbonize the world economy, and so-called "green" hydrogen is one of the levers. The war created a fossil fuel crisis and inflation crisis that prompted the European Union and the United States to launch major new clean energy programs and projects, backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in funding. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in August, directs some $370 billion into decarbonization efforts that include $8 billion to es- tablish eight regional hydrogen production hubs around the nation. In July, Europe funded 41 hydrogen projects with €5.4 billion. Hubs will be established in ports like Hamburg and Rotterdam, supplied by hy- drogen produced from wind power in Portugal and solar photovoltaics in other places. As the so-called "hydrogen economy" gets built out in the coming years, the fuel will be transported by pipeline, truck, train, and ship for increasing use in generating electricity; fueling cars, buses and trucks; heating homes and offices; and manufacturing steel. Not to mention, roasting coffee beans. Emissions? Just H 2 0, in the friendly form of wa- ter vapor. But there's nothing new about hydrogen fuel. It powered the first internal combustion engines that were produced over 200 years ago. Plenty of it is being made today, but more than 99% is still derived from fossil fuels. China produces 25 million tons a year, mostly from coal. The U.S. makes 10 million tons annually from natural gas. This so-called "gray" hydrogen is mostly used to manufacture fertilizers and ammonia and to refine oil. Now the focus is on production of green hydrogen using clean energy like solar. Keith Wipke, who heads the fuel cell and hydrogen technology program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, told tech chronicle IEEE Spectrum in August that the cost of low-carbon hydrogen is becoming nearly as cheap, and sometimes cheaper, than fossil fuels. The 132 companies belonging to The World Hydrogen Council, a Belgium-based consortium, are investing billions of dollars a year, rapidly bringing down production costs and expanding adoption. Now the coffee world has jumped onto the bandwagon, with the commercial advent of hydrogen-powered roasters.

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