Heat Recovery

How do you fundamentally transform the utility carbon make-up of a fully occupied, 53-story skyscraper without disrupting the high-profile tenants who depend on its seamless operation? The answer, it turned out, was not just to replace old equipment, but to completely reimagine how the building uses and reuses energy.

Heat pumps have found growing popularity as a high-efficiency solution for cooling and heating. With greater public awareness and organizational emphasis on sustainability, these systems are a viable upgrade to a wide range of processes, from residential climate control to industrial heating and cooling applications. The flexible functionality of heat pumps – namely their ability to reverse the traditional vapor-compression cycle – offers them significant advantages over refrigerant and combustion-based systems.

The electrification of heating presents a significant opportunity to achieve decarbonization goals by reducing or eliminating the use of fossil fuels in traditional building systems such as boilers. The current geopolitical scenario has caused commodity prices to quickly rise and forced businesses, cities and countries to rethink their future dependance on fossil fuels and accelerate the conversion to sustainable alternatives.

Reducing fossil fuel use is key to meeting the dual goal of carbon and energy cost reduction. A Full Heat Recovery Engagement (FHRE) approach can dramatically reduce both, through applying simple principles and using existing technology. Simple measures can help focus the design of both the buildings served and the systems used to achieve these goals.

Opened in fall 2018, the new $19.3 million school building spans 65,837 square feet with a capacity to serve 500 students. The building serves students of pre-school age through Grade Five and is also designed to host groups of various sizes during summer months. It also serves as the campus gateway to the adjacent Elkton Public Library and the Elkton Middle and High Schools.

Absorption chillers have been around for more than 75 years, with several thousand chillers operating successfully all over the world today. Yet myths about cost, operation and performance surround this technology, particularly in North America. Look beyond the myths and you’ll discover absorption cooling technology can be efficient, cost-effective, flexible and reliable.

If you enjoy the occasional beverage from an aluminum can, there’s a decent chance the can was made by Ball Corporation, a container manufacturing giant with facilities across the world. The company’s facility in Saratoga Springs, New York, services beverage companies throughout the northeastern United States. The plant operates four production lines producing millions of aluminum cans per day.

Heat recovery opportunities have resulted in the largest amount of savings of our common projects our industrial energy management teams have implemented.  It is not the easiest type of project to implement but the amount of savings and the reduction of emissions makes this project very worthwhile.

When the topic of discussion is making ice cream, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t heat, but at Nestlé’s Ice Cream factory in Tulare, California, heat is recovered from air-cooled air compressors to heat process water. “Right out of the gate, everything is pneumatic,” explains Tom Finn, Project Engineer with Nestlé Ice Cream Division. “Air cylinders and air driven motors, the process piping valves which divert, route, stop/start, and mix process fluids, our packaging machinery including rejection, cleaning and vapor removal processes, all of these rely on compressed air.

The rise in energy prices is an unwelcome reality in today’s manufacturing and business environment. And while the rate of price increases for natural gas, heating oil and electricity may vary from year to year, the upward trajectory is clear. Energy cost reduction strategies are vital to staying competitive. Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine recently discussed heat recovery, from industrial compressed air systems, with the Compressed Air and Gas Institute’s (CAGI) Technical Director, Rick Stasyshan and with CAGI member – Werner Rauer of Kaeser Compressor. Their inputs should provide you with some insight in energy-saving technology.