Industrial waste heat potential and heat exploitation solutions

Abstract

The industrial waste heat potential in EU countries and UK is assessed using the most recent data, based on an established methodology that allows to estimate this underexplored resource per country, temperature level and industrial branch. This methodology is applied here combining two previous studies using the most recent energy balances data from Eurostat and other indicators of 2021. The waste heat potential and heat demand are then estimated, in order to identify the progress towards reduction of waste energy. It has been revealed that this progress is significant in terms of energy intensity, leading to a reduction of waste heat from 2015 to 2021, but still this heat amount is large and equal to 221.32 TWh/year in 2021. The second part of this work concerns the assessment of three mainstream solutions to exploit this waste heat: direct heat recovery, heat-to-power conversion, and heat upgrading with high-temperature heat pumps. The heat and electricity production potential of these solutions is identified, followed by the estimation of greenhouse gas emissions savings introduced by each one. It has been shown that the direct heat recovery solution brings the highest savings of almost 50 million CO2-eq. tonnes/year, followed by the heat upgrading one.