Skyven Technologies has rolled out an energy-saving system—and an alternative funding method—to help ethanol plants across the U.S. decarbonize profitably. At Western New York Energy, Skyven has put its thermal expertise and unique project finance model into operation. In late September, the company announced the official deployment of its industrial steam-generating heat pump at the 63 MMgy plant near Medina, New York. Skyven calls the technology platform used at WNYE and other industrial sites Arcturus.
The system captures low-temperature heat rejected from industrial processes, increases the temperature of that steam, and then redistributes the altered heat (at the same temps, pressures and quality needed) to existing boilers. The “energy-as-a-service” (EaaS) model Skyven provides with Arcturus means the funding, design, build-out and maintenance of its thermal tech are all provided to the partnering facility (WNYE, for example) for the life of the contract at no cost to the project partner.
With Arcturus deployed, Skyven’s leadership team believes an ethanol plant can eliminate 57% of facility emissions and 100% of process steam emissions—reducing its carbon intensity score by up to 10 points. On average, the company says, an ethanol plant can save more than $350,000 per year by running the system.
“Skyven’s mission is to decarbonize industrial process heat,” says Chris Barnhill, director of marketing. “We partner with industrial manufacturers to help them decarbonize profitably.”
Skyven Gets Started
The company formed in 2013 with different industrial heating solutions than it offers today. Originally, its technology focused on solar thermal collection offered to customers in an EaaS package—a business model Skyven maintained after pivoting to steam-generating heat pumps.
Barnhill says early conversations with industrial clients helped the comapny understand three things: decarbonization solutions must be cost-competitive with existing boilers; existing processes can’t be disrupted for integration into on-site heat sources; and facility downtime or loss of production is not an option.
Arcturus was created by a team of engineers that now works out of Texas and California to meet the challenges of those three things learned from industry. Their work to date has created a system that is cost competitive with boilers through “coefficient of performance” (COP) metrics, innovative fuel-switching mechanisms and easy integration into existing natural gas boiler systems.
The technology used by Skyven today is made up of what the company calls building blocks housed on modular skids. Each skid is shipped to a facility where the entire system is assembled on site. The timeline for construction and commissioning is roughly four months. According to Barnhill, the system operates as an external retrofit to manufacturing facilities and integrates only within the plant’s steam header and heat rejection system (which, he adds, will most likely be the thermal oxidizer exhaust for ethanol plants).
Because the system has full redundancy with existing boilers, there is no dedicated downtime required for installation, commissioning or maintenance. Once the system is operating, that redundancy enables a fuel-switching strategy. With the strategy, steam can be generated by the lowest-cost fuel source at any given time.
Skyven’s tech is suitable for a range of industries. For the pulp and paper sector, the company’s steam-generating heat pump can provide a facility with an annual savings of $830,000. In the chemical production space, savings per facility could equal $807,000 per year. Food and beverage plants could save nearly $175,000 per year.
The U.S. Department of Energy recognized Skyven’s unique approach to steam capture and re-use earlier this year. DOE selected Skyven for funding set aside for companies addressing climate challenges through technology or financing models.
When the DOE announcement was made, Blaine Collison, executive director at the Renewable Thermal Collaborative, said “industrial heat pumps have the opportunity to improve efficiency and dramatically cut emissions from industrial thermal processes.”
Although the Skyven deployment of Arcturus at WNYE is a first-of-its-kind in the U.S. ethanol industry, facilities in Europe have already added high-tech heat pump strategies. In Hungary, Pannonia Bio (parent company to Aztalan Bio LLC in southern Wisconsin) worked with Energy Integration Inc. cofounder Bill Schafer to design and install a similar system that relied on mechanical vapor recompression technology. EII was able to reduce total energy requirements at two adjacent ethanol plants. One of the plants (an ICM design) was able to cut energy usage by 47%. The other plant dropped its total energy requirements by 32% due to the use of EII’s unique industrial heat pump systems that follow the same strategic engineering ideology as Skyven’s.
Tim Winters, CEO of WNYE, says the heat pump installation showcases the ethanol plant’s commitment to innovation. “By integrating Skyven’s cutting-edge Arcturus technology,” Winters says, “we are taking significant strides in improving our community’s air quality by reducing our carbon footprint and improving our operational efficiencies.” Winters added that the project also exemplifies WNYE’s commitment to “sustainable practices and industry leadership.”
Working with Skyven
For WNYE, the process of working with Skyven was highly collaborative, Barnhill says. The team in New York was excited about several aspects of the project including the lack of downtime for installation, the use of proven technology and the chance to set a precedent for ethanol plants in the U.S. Finally, Barnhill explains, “WYNE is excited about the potential for deep decarbonization, rather than incremental progress on smaller energy savings projects.”
The Arcturus setup will cut emissions at the plant by roughly 20,000 metric tons annually. The WNYE system works as follows: First, low-grade heat is sourced from a commonly available onsite heat source (the plant’s thermal oxidizer exhaust) at temperatures between 160 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, that heat is transferred to water via a heat exchanger. Following that, the water is flashed under vacuum to produce vacuum-pressure steam, which is compressed up to the pressure and temperature of WYNE’s steam header using a multi-stage train of mechanical vapor recompression compressors. The whole system operates as an external retrofit and only integrates with the plant’s steam header and thermal oxidizer exhaust.
To understand how the system helps plants save money while reducing CO2 emissions, one has to understand COP (coefficient of performance) metrics. Despite fluctuations in natural gas prices, Skyven’s systems maintain cost competitiveness through superior efficiency. The COP of Arcturus significantly outperforms traditional natural gas boilers, Barnhill says.
For example, he offers, natural gas boilers have COPs of roughly 0.83. Arcturus, however, has a COP range of 2.1 to 8-plus. When the Arcturus COP is 2.7, that means natural gas boilers will require almost three and a half times more natural gas (on an energy equivalent basis) than the Skyven system’s electricity requirements for producing the same amount of steam. And electric boilers aren’t a better alternative to Arcturus either, according to Barnhill. Electric boilers have COPs of 0.99, which means they require 2.8 times more electricity than Arcturus to generate the same amount of steam.
The way Skyven handles project funding is almost as collaborative as the system design and install itself. To get started with Skyven, an industrial client would talk with the company’s engineering team to see how the options provided by Arcturus will match existing infrastructure. Then, Skyven deploys its software—called Galileo—a decarbonization modeling tool that rapidly scopes a project and completes conceptual engineering. The process takes only hours, Barnhill says, instead of months of onsite consultation. Galileo is another unique technology Skyven’s management team believes adds value to its project evaluation process.
If the partnership continues from that point, Skyven develops a thermal energy services agreement that outlines the scope of services and expectations. Skyven then moves forward at its own cost to create a detailed engineering design. Following that, both parties review financials with an understanding that Skyven will handle project management at its own expense, including procurement, installation and commissioning.
Once the system is up and running, Skyven provides ongoing maintenance and monitoring for the duration of the contract. Part of that process involves relying on real-time IoT monitoring sensors that provide data-backed carbon reporting and financial metrics on the plant’s operation and equipment.
Through their EaaS model, the success of a project hinges on how well the tech works. Skyven only makes money if its producer client is saving on emissions and reducing operating costs associated with energy consumption.
“We take performance measurement very seriously and provide various dashboards and reporting to monitor the success of the project,” Barnhill says.
The Skyven Standard
A project between California Dairies Inc. and Skyven helps to illustrate how the funding and ongoing project management setup works. For the heat-recovery project, direct funding for six dairy facilities came from a combination of Skyven, a third-party financing firm and a California Energy Commission Food Production Investment Program grant.
Darrin Monteiro, CDI vice president of sustainability and member relations, says Skyven was a fantastic partner, and that CDI didn’t incur any capex during the project install. And, when the project was complete,
CDI’s opex decreased.
Under that EaaS model, the clean-emission heat was verified and delivered by Skyven’s IoT monitoring system. The production facility was able to pay lower heat prices due to reduced natural gas volume needs. The savings created by the system were then shared by the producer, the third-party financiers and Skyven for the life of the contract.
According to Arnaud Susplugas, CEO of Kyotherm, the third-party financing team involved on the dairy project, “Skyven’s energy-as-a-service model has removed a major financial barrier to industrial decarbonization projects.”
The WNYE project was the first major deployment of Skyven’s technology package outside of its work with CDI. Arun Gupta, CEO of Skyven, says the ethanol plant project is “groundbreaking” and should “set a new standard,” across the industry.
Gupta started Skyven out of Texas after working with Texas Instruments’ Digital Light Processing Business. After he began touring industrial facilities, he learned about the amount of waste heat incurred on a daily basis. He began building Skyven into an affordable solutions provider.
“Skyven is out to prove that through clean process heat, our customers can achieve a competitive advantage and do good for their communities,” Gupta says, “without breaking the bank.”
Author: Luke Geiver
writer@bbiinternational.com
