Tapping Industrial Waste Heat Could Reduce Fossil Fuel

Demands
ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2009) — Tapping industrial waste heat could reduce
fossil fuel demands in the short term and improve efficiency of countless
manufacturing processes, according to scientists in Japan.
See Also:
Matter & Energy

 Thermodynamics
 Energy Technology
 Petroleum

Earth & Climate

 Environmental Science
 Energy and the Environment
 Hazardous Waste

Reference

 Heat pump
 Power station
 Boiling point
 Distributed generation

Lihua Zhang and Tomohiro Akiyama of Hokkaido University, Sapporo, explain that heat waste from
industrial processes, such as combustion and electricity generation is sometimes of low energy and
diffuse. Capturing this low-quality heat for re-use elsewhere on an industrial plant is usually not practical.
However, given current environmental and economic pressures the recuperation of such heat energy
could become viable.
The team has investigated three promising technologies for heat recovery: latent heat, reaction heat, and
the use of a Thermoelectric Device. The aim of their study was to find a way to capture the heat from
industrial furnaces and other systems without the constraints of time and space associated with simply
using the heat to produce steam to drive other processes at precisely the same site. They say their
approach can "recuperate industrial waste heat beyond time and space."
Key to making heat recuperation viable is understanding the nature of the energy involved. The
temperature distribution of waste heat depends largely on the type of industry. For example, 95% of the
waste heat in the electric power industry has a temperature below 150 Celsius. In contrast, 45% of the
waste heat in the chemical industry can be up to 50 Celsius above this.
Plant operators usually look at thermal energy in terms of simple enthalpy - the heat content - and
conclude that capturing heat of low temperature is not viable for powering other processes. Zhang and
Akiyama, however, suggest that exergy - the ability of the waste heat to do useful work - should also be
taken into consideration when planning an energy-saving strategy from the viewpoint of quality of energy.
They point out that high-temperature waste heat, with an adequately large exergy value exists in many
manufacturing industries. For example, slag and exhaust gases from steelmaking reside at well over 1000
Celsius, representing a powerful energy source. They explain that latent heat storage, chemical storage,
and thermoelectric conversion could be used as effective ways of recovering waste heat, either
individually or in combination.