Granite Geek: New technologies modernize maple syrup for a sweeter, greener future

If you have ever visited a sugar house to bask in the sweet-smelling aura of maple syrup creation, you know that it’s not exactly an energy efficient process.

It takes a lot of heat to boil off the water in tree sap and leave behind syrup, and that heat comes from burning lots of trees. The rule of thumb is: It takes a cord of wood to make 25 gallons of syrup. For days on end, steam and smoke and heat pour in all directions, filling what is usually a poorly insulated building and leaking out into the winter wonderland.

The result is scenic — photos of men in big jackets staring into the fire while steam swirls around them are a staple of maple-season articles — but can’t it be made less wasteful?

That’s the idea behind Environmental Quality Incentives Program or EQIP from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. As Jeremy Fowler, spokesman for the Conservation Service in New Hampshire, explained it to me, EQIP provides experience and money to help maple providers improve traditional ways of boiling off all the water in sap.

There are two main technical improvements.

One is reverse osmosis, which is used in a bunch of industrial applications and has been part of large-scale maple syrup operations for a number of years.

It pumps the sap through a membrane that has tiny holes which let water molecules through while blocking the bigger sugar molecules. This can remove 50% to 75% of the water before you start boiling, and since it’s an electric process rather than a thermal one, it’s much more efficient, just as an electrical car is much more efficient than a gasoline car.

The other maple application is upgrading the evaporators themselves, which are basically a firebox with the delightfully archaic-sounding name of “arches,” plus syrup baffles or other equipment to precisely control the temperature of the sap in the pan.

Evaporators can be simple. You can make one in your back yard, but you’ll inhale a lot of smoke and waste a lot of wood using it (and, if my friends’ experience is any guide, probably burn the syrup).

Modern systems take some of the heat being released by burning wood and use it to pre-heat the air pulled into the entering the system, reducing the amount of fuel needed to maintain temperature.

“My family sugars,” said Fowler. “We started in the driveway as a hobby that just snowballs. We bought a new wood arch a few years ago but we did not buy a steam pre-heater. When we did, we added it, it made a big difference.”

And that, not surprisingly, shows the biggest obstacles to modernizing this staple of New England life: expense and habit.

The smallest reverse osmosis machine costs at least $1,200 for a small sugar farm (under 150 taps) before installation — you can tack on another zero if you’re buying a modern evaporator.

You can even go further and get high-efficiency units that act like a wood gassification boiler, creating less ash and less of the particulate matter that is so dangerous to accidentally breathe in.

For a commercial operation this can pay off in fuel savings — even if you cut your own wood, it’s not free — and in time, since standing around waiting for the boil to finish gets old. But they’ve still got to be able to make that up-front payment.

There’s also the obstacle of habit. When something has been done for as long as people have boiled maple sap into syrup — it predates Europeans here — there can be a reluctance to change.

“There’s some of that: The typical old farmer, new trick kind of thing,” said Fowler. “Part of the reason for our existence as an agency is to provide the science, the proven technology, letting producers know these exist and can help farm viability, help keep you in business overall.”

And despite the warm fuzzy feeling we get from the knowledge that people around us are making syrup, it is a business. If the cost/income ratio doesn’t work, it won’t happen. Helping sugaring operations do their work more cleanly and efficiently can also help keep them around.

The post Granite Geek: New technologies modernize maple syrup for a sweeter, greener future appeared first on Concord Monitor.