Abstract
The use of industrial excess heat in district heating networks is very attractive. The main issue is the transport of the heat from the point of generation to the local distribution network, in a way similar to the structure of electricity transport and distribution networks. Absorption systems have been proposed to transport and distribute waste heat using two absorption stations. In one of them (step-up station), industrial heat at a low temperature is pumped to a higher temperature to facilitate its transport and at the same time increase the temperature difference between the supply and return streams, in this way reducing the hot water mass flow rate circulating through the heat transport network. Heat is then used in a second absorption system (step-down station) to provide heat to a low temperature local district network. In this paper, several absorption system configurations are analyzed for both stations. A detailed thermodynamic analysis of each configuration is performed using selected energy performance indicators to calculate its global performance. The implementation of these kind of systems could enable the use of waste heat to produce heating and cooling for smart communities located a few dozens of kilometers away from industrial sites.
Highlights
Introduction and ObjectivesSocial concerns about climate change are growing
This waste heat can be classified into three groups depending on its temperature, there is no consensus on the limits for the temperature ranges: High temperature (>400 ◦ C), medium temperature (100–400 ◦ C), and low temperature (
The current trend in DHC networks is to reduce their temperature, but in our case, we aimed to introduce absorption systems to effectively recover industrial waste heat at low temperatures
Summary
Introduction and ObjectivesSocial concerns about climate change are growing. Since the Copenhagen Climate Conference (1997), several countries began implementing energy policies to reduce global warming gases and air pollution. Due to industrial activities, such as washing, drying, cooling processes, emission of furnace exhaust gases, etc., huge amounts of waste heat are released to the ambient atmosphere [1] in many industrial sectors: Petrochemical plants, oil refineries, municipal waste incinerator plants, cement plants, etc. This waste heat can be classified into three groups depending on its temperature, there is no consensus on the limits for the temperature ranges: High temperature (>400 ◦ C), medium temperature (100–400 ◦ C), and low temperature (
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