WHAT AN UGLY WORD:

On Tuesday, AtmosZero unstealthed with a heat-pump boiler meant to fill this niche in the industrial decarbonization landscape. The Fort Collins, Colorado-based startup, backed by $7.5 million from investors led by Energy Impact Partners and $500,000 from the Department of Energy's ARPA-E program, also announced its first pilot project: a 650-kilowatt boiler being installed at the Fort Collins headquarters of New Belgium Brewing in partnership with heating and cooling engineering giant Danfoss.

It's a novel application of a technology that's rarely been used for industrial process heat. Most people think of heat pumps as tools for warming air and water inside buildings, not generating steam at 150 degrees Celsius and at pressures needed for industrial applications, as AtmosZero's systems are designed to do.

But ​"the only reason heat pumps have not delivered boiled water before is that no one has built heat pumps to boil water before," Stark said. 

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