Dolan Media Newswire Story
Subject: Oklahoma City company receives grant for high-tech coffee roaster
Pub: The Journal Record
Author: Marie Price
Category:
Sub-Category:
Issue Date: 11/03/2009 Word Count: 32
Oklahoma City company receives grant for high-tech coffee roaster
by Marie Price
Dolan Media Newswires
© Dolan Media Newswires 2009.OKLAHOMA CITY, OK -- A new coffee roaster developed by Oklahoma City-based Roasters Exchange re-uses coffee oils as fuel, reduces emissions and brews a fine cup of java, Roasters Exchange President Dan Jolliff said.
“You’ve got something that’s green,” he said. “It’s fuel-saving, it lowers your carbon footprint, and it gives you better-tasting coffee.”
The company was awarded a $209,833 matching grant from the applied research support program of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology to develop the Revelation roaster, of which Jolliff said several prototypes are working well in the field.
“This is to finish developing it, and also building it in larger sizes for larger companies,” Jolliff said.
He said the largest roasters the company has in mind would roast up to 600 pounds per batch. Jolliff said he uses a smaller version to roast coffee in his own shop.
The budget for the two-year project is $422,233. Jolliff said the Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance was helpful in assisting his company obtain the OCAST grant.
Roasters Exchange will work with the Oklahoma State University Kerr Food and Agricultural Products Center to modify the machine and verify energy and pollution efficiency claims.
Jolliff, who comes from a coffee-industry family, thinks his company’s roaster has the potential to make a big move in the coffee-roasting technology market.
“What we’re doing differently is the recirculation of cleaned air,” he said. “We’re taking hot air from the roasting process. We’re running it through a specially developed catalyst system that operates at low temperature and we’re burning the oils that are coming off the coffee. It’s the smoke you see. That’s oil. Oil is fuel, so we’re burning the oil in this catalyst. The air comes out hotter than it went in. So we capture that hot air that’s now been cleaned and run it back into the coffee to recirculate the energy.”
Jolliff said the roaster not only reuses coffee oils as fuel, but operates with lower energy.
“Even though it is a little bit more expensive, it saves probably 80 percent on fuel costs of conventionally roasting coffee with an afterburner,” he said.
An afterburner is equipment used by large coffee-roasting businesses to reduce emissions.
Then there’s that all-important element to coffee lovers: flavor.
“The Revelation system actually helps improve the taste of the coffee, because it roasts more evenly,” Jolliff said. “It has more control over the roasting than a conventional roaster.”
He said the new roaster heats not only the air, but the machine’s drum, both of which can be modified.
“By having all these adjustabilities in the roast, we can actually put out better coffee than a regular roaster,” Jolliff said.
Tim Bowser, a food process engineer at the OSU center, will lead the project’s research and technical components.
“We expect that the same technologies that make the High E Revelation coffee roaster successful may be applied to other food and agricultural products that are roasted,” Bowser said.
Jolliff’s family still owns Coffee Professionals, a Wilson, Okla., company started in the 1970s. Before that, his father worked with Cain’s Coffee Co.
“I used to go out and help my dad deliver coffee from the time I was about 6 years old,” Jolliff said.
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