Energy Efficiency in Industrial Processes

HighEFF Lab Coordinator: Ingrid Camilla Claussen
(Ingrid.C.Claussen@sintef.no)

National Laboratories for an Energy Efficient Industry for improved utilization of available industrial surplus heat and a reformation of the efficiency in various industry processes.

Carnot Lab Coordinator: Anshuman Pandey
(anshuman.pandey@tno.nl)

Accelerate Sustainable Industrial Heat Management

Achieving the climate objectives in industry requires more research and development into industrial heat technologies. More than 80% of industrial energy consumption is related to the use of heat, which could prove beneficial on the way to a sustainable energy economy. The Carnot lab, which recently expanded its facilities, is taking up this challenge. This heat lab in Petten offers companies the unique opportunity to further develop industrial heat technology on a small and large scale together with TNO.

ENEA Research Facility for building energy efficiency improvement by green infrastructures Coordinator: Dr. Patrizia De Rossi & Dr. Arianna Latini
(arianna.latini@enea.it ; patrizia.derossi@enea.it )

ENEA has developed a prototype building with green infrastructures equipped with a microclimate and environmental monitoring system recording continuously numerous meteorological, radiative and air pollution parameters. There is an extensive green roof and a green wall.

There are different sectors in the green roof with different vegetation types to compare the effects of the specific green coverage on green roof thermal energy performance. The green wall is integrated on a stainless-steel grid fixed to the building wall by anchors. The grid exposes modular planter boxes were climbing and hanging plants cover the framework provided by the grid. Furthermore, integrated to the building there is also a “green” bioclimatic solar greenhouse, equipped with LED illuminance. This “green” building facility allows the evaluation of the thermal fluxes between vegetated and unvegetated walls with the main objective to estimate the electricity saving for the air conditioning of indoor spaces in summer season under Mediterranean climate.

The implementation of green infrastructures as green roofs and walls on industrial buildings, including processing plants and offices, represents a natural tool for reducing climatization energy load since the green layer works as a thermal insulating system. In addition, different sectors in the green roof are used to compare different plant species in relation to the effects of vegetation on building thermal energy performance.

Research is also addressed to select adapted vegetation to reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality, capturing major organic volatile compounds (VOCs) emitted by the industrial site.

Fig.: ENEA Research Facility for building energy efficiency improvement by green infrastructures. A) ENEA “green” building; B) “green” building by night, the light is produced by the LED devices installed inside the vegetated solar greenhouse; C) green roof sector with sensors for meteorological parameters (air temperature and relative humidity, wind speed and pluviometer), global radiation and PAR, soil temperature and foliar temperature; D) monitoring meteorological and environmental system in a specific sector of the green wall before being covered by the vegetation; E) wall covered by vegetation.

Mollier Facility Coordinator: Simon Spoelstra
(simon.spoelstra@tno.nl)

No less than fifteen percent of the energy used by industry is needed for dewatering and drying processses This occurs mainly during the production of paper, chemicals and food. Innovations in this field are generally aimed at improving product quality, while there is also much to be gained from energy savings. TNO is taking up this challenge with the Mollier facility.

With financial support from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, TNO will build an advanced infrastructure with equipment to experiment with different types of dewatering and drying technologies in the coming period. Discussions are ongoing with industrial end-users and equipment manufacturers about the exact details of the research programmes that will start this year

Institute for Fluid Dynamics: Experimental Facilities Coordinator: Dr. Dr. h.c. Gunter Gerbeth
(g.gerbeth@hzdr.de)

The institute is conducting basic and applied research in the fields of thermo-fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics in order to improve the sustainability, the energy efficiency and the safety of industrial processes. The topics are embedded in the research field Energy.

VTT's Industrial CCUS and Power-to-X Piloting Environment & Laboratory Coordinator: Janne Kärki
(janne.karki@vtt.fi )

VTT’s research infrastructure on carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) and Power-to-X enables companies and other stakeholders to take a step further from the laboratories towards industrial demonstrations. Home bases for the piloting equipment are in Jyväskylä and Espoo, but due to the sea container build, many of those can be transported directly to any industrial site to demonstrate complete value chains e.g. from waste CO₂ to synthetic fuels.

VTT has the capability to pilot the capture of CO₂ with direct air capture (DAC), electric calcination of limestone or lime mud in a rotary kiln, soda scrubbing, oxy-fuel combustion, and calcium-looping combustion. The captured CO₂ stream can be purified and compressed into gas bottles for transportation or utilized on-site, for instance in a mobile Fisher-Tropsch synthesis unit with hydrogen from a water electrolyzer. VTT is experienced in CCUS applications of energy carriers, chemicals, plastics, mineral powders and construction products.

The piloting equipment is generally in a scale between 0.1-10 kilograms product (H₂, CO₂, synthetic hydrocarbons) per hour exceeded by our electric rotary kiln demonstration and CO₂ compression units at up to 100 kg/h scale. The piloting equipment is supported with laboratory scale versions for pre-tests and analysis equipment (XRD, XRF, EDS, PSD, SEM, TGA-DSC-QMS, FTIR among others).

In combination with the expertise in technology reviews, techno-economic assessments and life-cycle analyses, VTT can efficiently screen and select the best alternatives for CO₂ utilization and/or storage in a given industrial setting and thus greatly reduce the risk in investments and speed-up the deployment when scaling up your technology from laboratories to commercial scale.

Glossary

CCUS: carbon capture, utilization and storage
EDS: energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy
FTIR: Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy
PEM: Proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer
PSD: particle size distribution analysis
Power-to-X: electricity converstion to a product ‘X’
SEM: scanning electron microscopy
TGA-DSC-QMS: thermogravimetric analysis – differential scanning calorimetry – quadrupole mass spectrometry
XRD: X-ray diffraction analysis

Research Facilities

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