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Saving Money And Going Green

About

Alaska Pure Sea Salt is a women-owned business with two employee-owners located in Sitka, Alaska. The company produces Alaska's only flake sea salt using local sea water and local flavoring additions.

The Challenge

The Alaska MEP, part of the MEP National Network™ ,was contacted by one of the owners, Jim Michener to see if we could help them engineer a solution to their boiling problem. They need to boil massive amounts of sea water to get down to a highly concentrated solution that they can then carefully make into flaked sea salt. This process is very energy intensive and they were using diesel power generation to boil down the water. They wanted to use a more efficient induction boil method that would have the added benefit of allowing them to tap into the local hydro-power thus becoming nearly carbon neutral.

The Alaska MEP and their engineers provided me with a high-quality solution to my energy-intense salt production process. They designed a large-scale induction boiler that will allow me to connect to our city's hydro-power making us more sustainable and lowering our energy costs!

— Jim Michener, Owner

MEP's Role

The Alaska MEP connected Alaska Pure Sea Salt with university engineering students guided by an engineering professor to design an induction heating system that would allow them to utilize local hydro-power to boil seawater. The solution created was exactly what the owners were looking for and they are now actively engaging with companies that can manufacture the engineered solution.

Created July 29, 2021