Circular Economy

Rising gas prices and higher carbon costs are driving demand for waste heat recovery. ETEKINA has designed three heat pipe waste heat exchangers recovering 40 percent of the waste heat in the exhaust streams at each of the four facilities.

The code of the integrated platform and of its modules is now available at GitHub. This means that a large community of potential users will now be able to access it for free. By testing the platforms application in different geographical locations, it can be tailored to the needs of the final users.

The ETEKINA project has reimagined a decades-old technology called heat pipe heat exchangers. The technology allows companies to re-use the heat they generate. So far three sites that installed the prototype technology have slashed their fuel costs by 40%.

The ETEKINA project aims to recover 57-70% of the waste heat stream in energy intensive industries which up to now just go out of the chimney. The new heat pipe heat exchangers are an efficient tool to recover heat from industrial processes.

Carbon dioxide emissions are a common issue for many intensive-energy industries. But Ceramics companies are increasingly turning to creative solutions to reduce their climate footprint. Ceramic tile manufacturing industry does not have a reputation for being exactly environmentally friendly.

EU funded research is closing the circle with novel systems that recover waste heat and return it for reuse. Most process heat is lost to the environment as exhaust or discharge streams. Recovering and reusing this heat reduces energy consumption, emissions and pollutants.

Engineers use summer break to launch new heat recovery system. ETEKINA heat pipe heat exchangers (HPHE) designed for one of the furnaces unit is fully functional and full scale prototype intended for energy-intensive industries.

Less than 30% of the energy consumed on the planet is converted efficiently. The rest is discharged into the atmosphere in the form of waste heat. Excess heat produced by chillers in a supermarket can end up providing space heating and hot water for flats.

Ceramic production has had a bad reputation when it comes to environmental issues. But that is starting to change. Gabriele Frignani is responsible for applied research at SACMI FORNI SpA*,. He is co-ord.