Waste Heat Recovery in Industrial Processes
As an innovative company, Baelz is also a partner in the Indus3Es and Push2Heat funding projects through its affiliate BS Nova, with the aim of developing a system for recovering waste heat in industrial processes. These are EU projects to promote research and innovation to bring new ideas onto the market as an investment in the future of the planet. The common goal of the partners involved is to achieve heat recovery in large industrial systems using a holistic approach to the entire energy cycle with respect to recovery, conversion, transfer and use of heat.
Excess heat in industrial processes accounts for a staggering 20 - 50% of the energy used. This energy is released into the environment as waste heat since, at temperatures below 130 ° C, it is not useable for practical and economic reasons. The aim of the funding project is to bring this low-temperature energy up to the higher temperatures required in order for it to be useful in internal industrial processes, ultimately leading to a reduction in the consumption of primary energy in industry.
The environmentally friendly absorption chiller technology on which the refrigeration systems are based, using water as a refrigerant and lithium bromide as an absorbent, can also be applied as a heat pump to increase the temperature of waste heat. With the Indus3Es system, almost 50% of the waste heat can be raised to a temperature at which it can be reused in the industrial process, with an impressive COP of 0.5. This enables huge savings in primary energy, money and, of course, CO2.