Industry

Heat Recovery

Heat recovery is a collective term for the practice of reusing the thermal energy generated during a manufacturing process and frequently emitted into the environment as unused waste heat. This waste heat can be deployed effectively in heat recovery. Therefore, the potential energy savings are huge. Return air streams or flue gas streams that deploy heat recovery technologies can be used to pre-heat room air or combustion air. By linking procedures in an intelligent manner, it is possible to considerably reduce the amount of primary energy consumed.

Heat recovery measures result in both lower energy costs by reducing the use of primary energy and lower investment costs for heat production plants. Furthermore, the volume of greenhouse gases emitted is reduced considerably. Heat recovery is responsible for achieving sustained conservation or renewal of energy streams ultimately released by manufacturing processes into the environment. Therefore, heat recovery can be regarded as a renewable energy.

Picture: BMWi

The advantages associated with heat recovery can be summarised as follows:
Heat recovery can reduce the connection power for heat energy and cooling energy, the level of energy consumption for heating and cooling, investment costs and operating costs as well as pollutant emissions. System technology can be scaled down; heating boilers, refrigerators, re-cooling plants, piping, stacks etc. are no longer required. Numerous technical possibilities are associated with heat recovery. Process heat can be transferred directly to solids. Furthermore, it can also be transferred to gases and liquids, for example, when pre-heating water or combustion air for furnaces or dryers.

Possible heat sources include:

• Use of condenser heat from steam systems and boiler systems
• Heat recovery from ventilation and air-conditioning systems
• Extraction of residual heat from waste heat in order to pre-heat heating water or domestic water

Germany's expertise in this area ranges from heat recovery in large plants to possible applications of heat recovery technologies in small and medium-sized companies.

German companies are especially committed to energy efficiency because Germany has state sponsorship programmes (for example, the European Recovering Programme ERP) as well as financing concepts backed by financial institutions and leasing companies for energy-saving measures. The government also finances energy consultations for companies. All of the above has given rise to a domestic business market for innovations in industrial heat recovery. The resulting expert knowledge can also be applied globally.