Cyrtan
PROJECT TYPE
Business Strategy + Market Expansion
ROLE
UX & UI Designer
Product Strategy
Visual Storytelling
TEAM
CMU MIIPS Capstone Team (6 people group)
TIMELINE
2026/01 – 2026/04
Project Overview
Cyrtan Energy is a product reframing effort focused on aligning a waste-to-energy system with real customer needs.
Early positioning emphasized energy generation, but research revealed a mismatch: manufacturing facilities were not actively seeking new energy solutions. Instead, their primary challenge was the cost and complexity of managing contaminated wood waste.
In response, Cyrtan redefined its approach. The target user shifted toward furniture finishers and similar manufacturers with high disposal pain, the value proposition moved from energy production to waste cost reduction, and the product evolved into a cluster-based Recovery Hub model.
This system aggregates waste from multiple facilities, processes it into usable feedstock, and converts it into continuous on-site energy.
This reframing transforms Cyrtan from a standalone technology into a more practical, service-oriented system—one that reduces disposal costs, simplifies operations, and creates a clearer path for adoption and scale.
Cyrtan Final Solution: Recovery Hub Pilot
Cyrtan Recovery for Furniture Finishers
Furniture finishers assemble, detail, stain, seal, and apply topcoats to wooden furniture.
A primary source of contaminated wood waste in the industry.
Environmental + Regulatory Drivers
Why Waste Becomes a Business Problem
Why This Problem Won’t Go Away
Economic Drivers
1. Biomass waste creates recurring costs: handling, transport, and disposal/processing fees
2. Costs swing due to:  fuel surcharges, contract resets, and contamination penalties
3. Facilities pay to remove waste while still purchasing on-site energy
Environmental + Regulatory Drivers
Research Insight
Secondary Research
Research Summary
Interview Insights
How is waste managed today?
When waste is generated, it goes through a pretty standard chain. It gets collected, stored, sorted, and then transported off-site. From there, it branches depending on the material type. Cardboard and paper can either be recycled if they're clean or landfilled if they're contaminated. Food waste goes to composting. And material from water treatment plants gets dried out and ends up in the landfill too. So even when facilities are doing the right things, sorting, separating, hauling, a lot of this material still ends up in the ground. The system has real leaks.
When wood waste is generated, it gets split into two streams. The accepted stream, meaning clean, fresh, natural wood, can go to recycling, get turned into mulch, or be repurposed. But here's the problem: that accepted stream is actually the minority. The rejected stream, anything painted, treated, engineered, or the wrong size, gets hauled straight to a landfill. And that's 80% of all wood waste generated. Seventy million tonnes of wood waste every year, and the vast majority of it has nowhere to go but the ground.
Stakeholders
Material
Energy
Value
Market Gap
Wood Recycling Has No Reliable “Sink” for Out-of-Spec Material
1. Hauling + landfill
It is the default ‘sure thing’—but it comes with high tipping fees, and it’s wasteful and not sustainable.

2. Recycling to mulch
sounds better, but recyclers mostly accept only natural wood, and they enforce strict size and quality specs—so loads get rejected often.

3. Repurposing the wood
helps in small pockets, but it’s labor-intensive and can’t absorb large, recurring volumes.

So the gap is clear: wood recycling has no reliable “sink” for out-of-spec material. When the accepted pathway fails, the waste just falls back to landfill—expensive, volatile, and guaranteed.”
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Opportunity for Cyrtan
Value Opportunity
For high volume wood processors, traditional disposal methods treat offcuts and sawdust as a costly liability, perpetuating a "double-leak" financial model of high tipping fees and premium utility rates.
Partners and Customers
Quick Facts
Partner: Georgia-Pacific
‍Revenue: $25 billion
‍Facilities: +150 paper mills worldwide
‍Challenge: 100 tons/day of paper pulp sludge costing $600,000 annually
‍Solution: Combustion tests validated waste-to-energy transition
‍Result: Reduced waste disposal costs,enhanced sustainability, and corporate support for scaling.
Report Link
Want to work together?
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