Valorisation of waste heat in industrial systems (SPIRE PPP)

Deadline: Jan 21, 2016  
CALL EXPIRED

Topic Description

Energy and fuels represent between 20% and 40% of the production costs in several Resource and Energy Intensive Industries (REII). A lot of technical progresses were already done in REII to reduce the energy consumption of the main industrial products. Nevertheless, significant parts of the input-energy are still lost in the form of waste heat by gas, liquid or solid streams.

Those losses occur because either the corresponding energy losses are difficult to recover and re-use in the process itself or in another part of the production process or the required equipment are too costly (low ROI).

The challenge is to design, build, test & demonstrate new processes/components or innovative adaptation of existing solutions for waste energy recovery in large industrial systems.

Furthermore, sources of energy losses that are considered as a waste for a given industry could be a valuable resource for another one, directly or after an intermediate transformation step. By reusing waste and residual heat in a more efficient way primary energy can be saved. This topic responds to the needs of the process industry identified in the roadmap of the SPIRE cPPP (Sustainable Process Industry through Resource and Energy Efficiency contractual Public-Private Partnership).

Actions should improve the energy efficiency of large industrial systems by designing economic industrial solutions based on innovative technologies for recovery of waste heat or the innovative adaptation of already existing solutions for waste heat recovery. Actions should address the recovery of waste heat from streams from industrial processes (e.g. waste streams, by-products, intermediates) or from surplus heat in plant parameters to transform it in useful energy forms, including the production of technical gases (e.g. oxygen, hydrogen) to be used in the industrial process itself or exported as by-products. Solutions should be adaptable to various types of industrial processes and should be validated by full scale demonstration in real production conditions in industrial facilities.

Actions could either propose innovative technologies for the efficient recovery of waste heat in large industrial systems or innovative solutions of energy symbiosis between industries or plants inside industrial parks for the valorisation of waste and residual heat.

For actions proposing innovative technologies for waste heat recovery in large industrial systems one or more of the following technological issues should be addressed:

• The intermittent character of the recoverable energy flows and its variations during normal operating conditions e.g. adapted storage to smooth these variations (such as low materials cost with high thermal inertia, Phase Change Materials, commodities storage, etc.);
• Achieving safe, controlled and efficient recovery of heat from media, which are very difficult to handle and control (high temperature, high volumes, highly aggressive- fouling/deposits/corrosion);
• The transfer of energy flows from a process line to the other one, and investigating the potential use of recovered energy in other processes with various heat transfer media (water/steam, oil, salts, gases….);
• The influences of the new heat recovery process on the product quality (e.g. dry cooling instead of wet cooling);

Actions proposing innovative solutions of energy symbiosis between industries or plants inside large industrial parks for the valorisation of waste and residual heat should cover, if possible, all the following points:

• To analyse, characterise and assess the sources of energy losses in the spirit of reusing them in other plants or industries (e.g. amount, composition, temperature, impurity and fluctuation have to be taken into account, improving the global environmental impact, and new measurements and models could be needed to identity them) and to identify the relevant heat and energy demands;
• To determine and demonstrate flexible solutions to coordinate the sources and demands and to optimise the energy fluxes between the different plants and industries. Interactions between the industrial site and the surroundings should be taken into account as an additional opportunity for valorisation of waste/residual heat. New management systems for the energy loss fluxes have to be developed;
• To determine and demonstrate innovative storage technologies and strategies to harmonize energy use for fluctuating inputs (e.g. wind, converter gas) and variable (batch) process demands and to exploit the variations of the hourly electricity price;
• To determine and demonstrate innovative conversion technologies and strategies to improve the accordance of demands and sources of energy;
• To define the most suitable energy carriers to be implemented in a laboratory scale at the proper scale in the environment representative of industrial application laboratory scale.

New management systems for the energy loss fluxes have to be developed basing on the parameters and models described above.

The activities are expected to be implemented at TRL 5-7 (please see part G of the General Annexes).

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 and 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Proposed actions are expected to demonstrate the impacts listed below, using quantified indicators and targets, wherever possible.

For actions proposing innovative technologies for waste heat recovery in large industrial systems:

• Recovery of at least 40% of the sensible heat contained in each waste heat carrier addressed by the project.
• Measureable substantial primary energy savings clearly quantified and substantiated, and subsequent reduction of CO2 emissions
• The improvement of the energy efficiency and the reduction of energy cost will lead to a demonstrated advancement in competitiveness by the end of the project. This will expand the available portfolio of energy resources and technologies, which can be integrated within sites, across sectors and along value chains.

For actions proposing innovative solutions of energy symbiosis between industries or plants inside large industrial parks for the valorisation of waste and residual heat:

• Recovery of at least 40% of waste/residual heat.
• Measureable substantial primary energy savings, clearly quantified and substantiated, and subsequent reduction of CO2 emissions.
• Cost-saving optimizations of energy and resources supply and demand by taking into consideration both economical and sustainability constraints.