Heat Pumps Today

Lee Hermitage, EMEA Marketing Director for Advanced Materials at Honeywell, explains why the energy crisis is beginning to make the case for heat pumps a no brainer and discusses how heat pump technology promises to help the UK’s manufacturers comply with emissions regulation and reduce their energy bills. At the same time, he also explains what the Government needs to do to encourage greater consumer adoption. Lowering costs and stabilising supply – the case for heat pumps There’s a bumpy road ahead for energy prices that is set to e ect industry and domestic prices in the coming year. Firstly, Ofgem made their announcement that the energy price cap was increasing to 54%, which will see bills increase for domestic use by just under £700 from April. There is also the threat of supply as the West imposes sanctions on Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine. With current uncertainty set to potentially push prices to record levels, it’s clear that we need to adapt and change our approach to energy supply. Caught between a rock and a hard place – legislation on one side, rising energy prices on the other – the UK’s besieged manufacturing sector desperately needs a way to remain compliant while also substantially reducing its energy bills. One technology that has recently garnered headlines is the use of heat pumps; an energy recovery technology that reuses valuable heat energy that would otherwise be lost or wasted. For example, a heat pump can absorb excess heat produced in a manufacturing process and use it to provide space heating and hot water. The immediate benefits are obvious. The need for heat However, modern industrial heat pumps go further than that; they can boost the temperature of a waste-heat stream to an even greater level; high enough for use in a range of manufacturing processes. The potential market is huge – the need for heat is responsible for 70% of industrial energy demand, most of which is currently generated by gas. www.acrjournal.uk/heat-pumps 27 I N D U S T R Y C O MM E N T And it’s not just waste energy from buildings and processes that can be recycled – renewable energy from the air, water or the ground can be utilised to provide heating and cooling. It’s therefore little wonder that the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) flagship report, “Net Zero by 2050”, states that heat pumps will be a cornerstone technology for displacing fossil fuel heating to achieve net zero CO 2 emissions. Importantly, heat pumps can be integrated with energy storage so that if there is no immediate use for the energy that has been recovered, it can be saved until it's next needed. Also, a high performance heat pump can achieve e…ciencies of 500% or more, providing 5kW of heat energy for every 1kW of electricity; a new gas boiler operates at 90% e…ciency. The numbers speak for themselves, heat pumps are an e…cient way of generating heat. Clawing back the costs However, not all heat pumps are created equal. Current designs are mostly limited to outputting a heat supply of around 70°C to 80°C, but many industrial methods often require temperatures of between 100°C to 200°C, such as food processing, drug manufacturing, paper and board production, engineering, cement works and the plastics industry, amongst many others. Last October, we announced a collaboration with UK-based company Futraheat, for a revolutionary heat pump technology that aims to help industry radically reduce its carbon emissions cost-e ectively. The company’s TurboClaw® high temperature heat compressor, the heart of its heat pump design, uses Honeywell’s Solstice® zd (R-1233zd), a non-flammable, ultra-low-global-warming-potential (LGWP) refrigerant replacement for R-123, which has been phased out because of environmental concerns. Futraheat has already received a £500,000 grant from Innovate UK to build a 300 kilowatt TurboClaw demonstrator, which it anticipates trialling in early 2022 for waste heat recovery. Its technology is unique and can deliver a substantial step-up in performance. Its enumerated benefits typically include an 80% cut in energy consumption, a 25% reduction in fuel bills, payback within three years and CO 2 -free heat when powered by renewable electricity. Also, unlike other heat pump configurations, Futraheat’s design operates at greatly reduced speeds and is oil-free, yielding lower manufacturing, operating and maintenance costs. Lee Hermitage, EMEA Marketing Director for Advanced Materials at Honeywell