
Restaurant pizza ovens must maintain a constant temperature of 260 C to cook a great pizza, resulting in a lot of waste heat. McMaster University’s Jim Cotton partnered with Pizza Pizza, NSERC, OCE and Thermal Electronic Corp to capture that heat and put it to good use. His technology converts waste heat from ovens to electricity and thermal energy to partially offset the restaurants’ heating and electrical needs and provide resiliency in the event of a power outage. Not only does it significantly reduce energy costs, it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
The system is currently being installed in two restaurants and could eventually be installed in hundreds of Pizza Pizza locations across Canada.