Current Projects and Research

The EEC is home to several industrial and manufacturing research teams and projects, including the Oregon State ITAC. These teams and projects help advance the EEC's goal of of promoting energy and resource efficiency.

Walkthrough Checklist

  • In association with the Bonneville Power Association
  • The goal of this project is to create an online guide providing an overview of different industries, technologies, and industrial and manufacturing topics

Visit the Walkthrough Checklist here

Past Projects and Research

Hop Drying

  • In association with CESMII
  • The goal of this innovation project was to solve an energy efficiency use case leveraging smart manufacturing principles in the ~$640 million/year hop production industry
  • Recent work suggests dynamic drying protocols based on measured process parameters can be implemented to decrease both the product residence time and total energy consumption of the drying process while maintaining or improving product quality
  • The project team, led by Co-PIs Drs. Fronk, Haapala, and Shellhammer, worked with 4 small/medium sized brewing hop producers in the Pacific Northwest to identify the energy saving potential of new drying protocols based on smart manufacturing principles

Read the study here

Portland Pumping Project

  • In association with the City of Portland Water Bureau
  • The goal of this project was to model pump efficiency using real-time data
  • This project will generate equations that can be used to compare to real-time data to find problems in the system and predict maintenance

Evaporative Cooling

  • In association with the City of Gresham
  • The goal of this project was to investigate the use of evaporative cooling in place of conventional cooling. 

Warehouse Destratification

  • The goal of this project was to model the use of solar powered fans in the destratification cooling process in warehouses in order to analyze savings potential.

Read the study here

Hybrid Water Heating

  • The goal of this project was to experimentally determine the thermal performance of a solar/gas water hybrid water heating system utilizing a flat plate solar collector array and natural gas burner.

Read the study here

View the full list of publications from ITAC Staff and Alumni here