The paper and pulp business is big in the Pine Tree State — so big that around half of Maine's toxic industrial pollution comes from that sector.
However, Energy News Network reported that a development from Worcester Polytechnic Institute could drastically slash those emissions while keeping economically beneficial jobs in place, as drying and processing facilities often rely on dirty fuels for operations and generate much of the paper and pulp industry's 1.1 million tons of planet-warming carbon pollution.
The key to this breakthrough is a laser system that Jamal Yagoobi, founding director of the institute's Center for Advanced Research in Drying, explained will be "easy to retrofit" in existing commercial-scale drying equipment — once it's ready for market.
In November, Yagoobi told Energy News Network that his team had successfully tested a laser paper-drying technology on food products and that the next step was to investigate how the lasers affect different materials to ensure they don't impact product quality.
"For paper, it's important to make sure the tensile strength is not degrading. For food products, you want to make sure the color and sensory qualities do not degrade," Yagoobi said.
While skeptics of this idea might picture highly concentrated beams of light zapping paper to oblivion, the laser system disperses the energy over a larger area to "evenly and gently dry the target material," according to Energy News Network.
"We are all excited about this — this is potentially a groundbreaking technology," Yagoobi said.
If realized at scale, the system will be yet another promising example of how green innovations are giving new life to communities while reducing pollution associated with severe health complications such as cancer and millions of annual premature deaths. For example, federal investments in former coal communities, including in West Virginia and Kentucky, are bringing clean-energy jobs and attracting private investors to local economies.
"There's often this old story of tensions between climate and jobs," Industrious Labs co-founder Evan Gillespie told Energy News Network. "But what we're trying to do is modernize these facilities and stabilize them so they'll be around for decades to come."
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According to the report, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded WPI $2.75 million to develop its industrial drying tech for commercial use.
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