The second in our series of original content produced for McMaster University. This piece focusses on the research work conducted by Dr. Jim Cotton and his team around the recovery of waste heat from pizza ovens, and pilot project with Pizza Pizza.
Research Story
The second in our original content series for McMaster University, this story follows Dr. Jim Cotton and his team as they recover waste heat from pizza ovens, including a pilot project with Pizza Pizza.
Client
McMaster University
Industry
Education
Type
Documentary, Branded
Platform
Web & Social Media
Audience
Branded Series | ENGINEERED / Pizza Pizza | Client: McMaster University Transcript
Music Playing Here at McMaster University, pizza isn't just feeding hungry students. It's also fueling ideas on how to change the future. It's very cool to be able to walk into a pizza restaurant and do my PhD. Students here are studying the energy used to cook the perfect piece of pie and learning just how much of it goes to waste.
This is the thermal management research laboratory. The whole lab is focused around energy harvesting and capturing the lost heat that is just blowing up our chips. Pizza ovens, and ovens in particular, are inherently inefficient. Only about 10% of the energy content of the fuel goes into the pizza itself. The rest is just lost to the surroundings.
Energy use is one of the biggest environmental issues on our planet today. Creating energy uses up our Earth's precious resources. If these engineers can harness wasted energy, then less energy needs to be made in the first place, saving money and the environment. All we do is tap into the energy that's in that pizza oven, and we're able to actually extract that heat and move it somewhere else.
First, Jim and his students, like Jeff, had to figure out how to capture that wasted energy. What's behind me is the thermal storage tank, and that's what we're using for the Pizza Pizza project. Basically what we're doing is we're taking the heat from the exhaust gases from an oven, recovering it, transporting it, and storing it in a thermal storage tank.
And then we're also generating a little bit of electricity on the side to power couch registers, lights, pumps, and whatnot. The key to their idea is this cooling device. A few tweaks from these intrepid engineers turned it into the perfect pizza oven generator. One side is connected to the pizza oven exhaust. The other is connected to coolant.
That temperature difference alone sparks up a tiny bit of power in each of these elements. Jim's team engineered the device so that they can grab that power easily and use it to fuel the restaurant. You have, in this case, thousands of these junctions. We can generate about 150 watts from this single oven of electricity.
Next, it was a matter of installing the system in an actual full-fledged pizza restaurant. Not only to see if it works, but to see how they can make the system even better. So right now we have an entire system that measures anything from the temperature in every single section. So where the customers would be sitting or in the kitchen.
The temperature of every single oven in here. We wanted to get an understanding as to what the energy use was of this restaurant. Because when we generate electricity, we capture or harvest some of that waste heat, we want to know where it is best to put it. And the results are already being delivered. They're slicing some serious energy use from the grid.
We're talking an increase in efficiency from 10% to as much as maybe 50%. Proving it doesn't take rocket science to use energy efficiently is good news for the environment and a great sign for the future. With the system up and running, Jeff and his team are now moving forward, trying to get this technology into pizza restaurants across the country.
Over the next year, we're going to be going to investors to hopefully start the business and get this thing into the pizza stores. Because that's the end goal, right? The team is already dreaming of ways to move beyond pizza restaurants to get their devices harnessing heat in rural communities and in emergency situations.
In northern communities where you capture the waste heat from the wood stove and use that to generate electricity, to power your iPod, to charge your phones and things like that. Ultimately, we are reducing our impact on the environment through implementing a new and novel technology into existing infrastructure. From our homes to our industrial processes, all the way through to pizza. From fueling young minds to fueling the world, at McMaster, the future is engineered.
About this project
Thank you for your tremendous work on this project. The videos both turned out amazing. It was an enjoyable experience from beginning to end. A big thanks to you and all of your team for the outstanding work.
Susan Emigh
Director, Public Relations, McMaster Faculty of Health Sciences
Branded Series | ENGINEERED / Pizza Pizza | Client: McMaster University Transcript
Music Playing Here at McMaster University, pizza isn't just feeding hungry students. It's also fueling ideas on how to change the future. It's very cool to be able to walk into a pizza restaurant and do my PhD. Students here are studying the energy used to cook the perfect piece of pie and learning just how much of it goes to waste.
This is the thermal management research laboratory. The whole lab is focused around energy harvesting and capturing the lost heat that is just blowing up our chips. Pizza ovens, and ovens in particular, are inherently inefficient. Only about 10% of the energy content of the fuel goes into the pizza itself. The rest is just lost to the surroundings.
Energy use is one of the biggest environmental issues on our planet today. Creating energy uses up our Earth's precious resources. If these engineers can harness wasted energy, then less energy needs to be made in the first place, saving money and the environment. All we do is tap into the energy that's in that pizza oven, and we're able to actually extract that heat and move it somewhere else.
First, Jim and his students, like Jeff, had to figure out how to capture that wasted energy. What's behind me is the thermal storage tank, and that's what we're using for the Pizza Pizza project. Basically what we're doing is we're taking the heat from the exhaust gases from an oven, recovering it, transporting it, and storing it in a thermal storage tank.
And then we're also generating a little bit of electricity on the side to power couch registers, lights, pumps, and whatnot. The key to their idea is this cooling device. A few tweaks from these intrepid engineers turned it into the perfect pizza oven generator. One side is connected to the pizza oven exhaust. The other is connected to coolant.
That temperature difference alone sparks up a tiny bit of power in each of these elements. Jim's team engineered the device so that they can grab that power easily and use it to fuel the restaurant. You have, in this case, thousands of these junctions. We can generate about 150 watts from this single oven of electricity.
Next, it was a matter of installing the system in an actual full-fledged pizza restaurant. Not only to see if it works, but to see how they can make the system even better. So right now we have an entire system that measures anything from the temperature in every single section. So where the customers would be sitting or in the kitchen.
The temperature of every single oven in here. We wanted to get an understanding as to what the energy use was of this restaurant. Because when we generate electricity, we capture or harvest some of that waste heat, we want to know where it is best to put it. And the results are already being delivered. They're slicing some serious energy use from the grid.
We're talking an increase in efficiency from 10% to as much as maybe 50%. Proving it doesn't take rocket science to use energy efficiently is good news for the environment and a great sign for the future. With the system up and running, Jeff and his team are now moving forward, trying to get this technology into pizza restaurants across the country.
Over the next year, we're going to be going to investors to hopefully start the business and get this thing into the pizza stores. Because that's the end goal, right? The team is already dreaming of ways to move beyond pizza restaurants to get their devices harnessing heat in rural communities and in emergency situations.
In northern communities where you capture the waste heat from the wood stove and use that to generate electricity, to power your iPod, to charge your phones and things like that. Ultimately, we are reducing our impact on the environment through implementing a new and novel technology into existing infrastructure. From our homes to our industrial processes, all the way through to pizza. From fueling young minds to fueling the world, at McMaster, the future is engineered.
Explore our Work
