Energy Recovery & DHC

Treating wastewater in Australia produces three million tons of sludge which must be treated and disposed of. The process is responsible for 50% of the total operating costs of wastewater treatment plants. A new treatment technology would reduce the amount of waste by a third also recovering energy from the sludge itself.

The EMB3Rs platform is set to help companies cost-effectively convert waste heat to a valuable revenue stream. It maps the supply and demand of thermal energy from potential stakeholders and shows how excess heat and cold can be re-used.

In the U.S. alone, 140 million tons of waste find their way into landfills every year. Energy recovery as a waste treatment process sees Waste-to-Energy technologies convert chemicals in waste residues into practical forms of energy.

The Alliance for Energy Cooperation in European Industries (Alliance4ECEI) will hold the online session Digital tools as enablers of more efficient energy consumption in industrial waste heat/cold recovery as part of the activities of the Sustainable Energy Days in September 15 from 10:30 until 12:00 CEST.

European project EMB3Rs is finding new ways to recycle industrial waste heat. The project aims to raise energy efficiency, cut carbon emissions and end fuel poverty. Currently, the only large-scale District Heat Cold (DHC) network in Portugal is operated by Climaespaço.

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.