Stewardship
Steam? You mean like in old trains from the 1800s?
Not quite. Interesting fact: Humanity has never generated as much steam as it does today. Almost everything around you is made in an industrial processes that requires tremendous amounts of steam. Every single piece of clothing you wear, your desk, the paper in your printer, the plastics encasing your computer, your carpet, and your walls (paint, gypsum, insulation), most of the food you consume, and the fertilizer needed to grow it—all rely on steam. This doesn’t even include the critical role steam plays in electricity production, for example, in coal and nuclear power plants.
How is industrial steam generated?
Industrial steam is typically produced using coal or natural gas, which flows 24/7 through large pipelines from regional gas hubs. In Europe, it costs about $30–$40 to generate one ton of steam, emitting approximately all sorts of gasses in the process, including 130 kg of CO2. A typical factory requires 50 tons of steam per hour, resulting in about 150 tons of CO2 emissions daily from its gas boilers alone.
Can't we just switch to electric boilers?
Switching to electric boilers (e-boilers) often triples energy costs. Furthermore, in many regions, the electricity powering these boilers still comes from coal plants.
What's the scale?
A quarter of the world’s energy is used to generate industrial heat, making it one of
the most challenging sectors to reform. When discussing stewardship and reduced combustion, industrial heat is the elephant in the room.
Hydram's Solution
Hydram's industrial-sized boilers efficiently generate steam using low-grade thermal energy as the primary fuel source. In essence, it converts otherwise wasted warmth into energy. Largest inefficiencies of industries such as data centers, chemicals, pulp and paper, petroleum refining is the tremendous amounts of energy lost via waste-heat. Industrial complexes and power plants often even rely on gargantuan cooling towers, releasing heat plumes easily visible from space.
Hydram Research's mission is to cost-effectively capture this otherwise lost thermal energy and transform it back into usable steam or electricity.