Heat Pumps Today

22 By Dave Palmer, General Manager for the UK and Ireland at ICS Cool Energy MAKING THE CHOICE: electrification of heating in process and critical applications McKinsey reports that industry consumes more energy than any other sector: 149 million terajoules in 2017 and fuel consumption for energy accounts for almost 45 percent of that energy consumption. 1 According to the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA), out of the 2,388 TWh of final energy the industry uses for heating and cooling purposes, most of it is for process heating. This puts Heating as one of the prime opportunities for reducing fossil-fuelled energy consumption and related emissions. Many industrial processes do operate at high temperatures and thus require low emission fuels but a change in process design can also lead them towards electrification. 2 Renewables could produce more than half of the world’s electricity by 2035, at lower prices than fossil-fuel generation, according to the same McKinsey report 3 . Considering zero-carbon electricity is flowing through the grid, by betting on electrification of heating technologies available today, industrial plants same as buildings, can lower their greenhouse-gas emissions significantly – a goal that is on the horizon for the majority of them. While feasibility of a heat pump in industrial applications depends on the temperature levels required by the manufacturing process, there are applications, which need low to medium temperatures – an area where heat pumps can step in to replace the fossil-fuel based solutions. Heat pumps – from buildings to process applications While heat pumps were traditionally known for their residential applications, with rising energy costs and increasingly ambitious environmental goals they have December | January 2022 C A S E S T U D Y Dave Palmer, ICS Cool Energy become more and more recognized for their commercial and industrial applications. Thanks to the technology innovation, many industrial processes like food and beverage, plastics and rubber, chemical and pharmaceutical – just to name a few – have started looking at heat pumps as an ecient heating solution for a wide range of their processes. As they were getting familiarised with the new products and technologies, they started recognizing the economic benefits from a most ecient use of energy while also providing a significant benefit towards emission reduction. Heating, cooling, heating while cooling, heating or cooling Heat pumps rely on one of the most energy-ecient methods of heating: the transfer of free thermal energy from outside to inside based on the dierence in temperature between the two. What not everybody in the industry does though is looking at cooling and heating at once. There are new opportunities ahead if we stop treating cooling and heating separately - we need to change the paradigm and start looking at heating from the cooling perspective and the opposite. Heating, cooling, heating while cooling, heating or cooling - choices can be make when it comes to satisfying heating and cooling demands in practically any application. Across the plants and buildings in UK and Europe, we see dierent heating demand profiles that come with specific eciency opportunities. 1 Plugging in: What electrification can do for industry (mckinsey.com ) 2 Industrial applications - EHPA 3 Plugging in: What electrification can do for industry (mckinsey.com ) All of them allow for significant eciency improvements by choosing the right heat pump solution – and sometimes even combine it with other technologies. While pure heating heat pump solutions require external (sustainable) heat sources such as air or (ground) water, simultaneous heating and cooling applications provide the unique opportunity to reclaim or harvest energy which is available within the same plant or building. Repurpose the heat Chillers and cooling plant are used to cool manufacturing processes and facilities, and just by doing so generate waste heat that typically gets lost to atmosphere, this heat does not just have to be wasted and can be harnessed eectively by Industrial Free Heating (i-FH) units. Repurposing energy by integrating cooling and heating systems is an opportunity often overlooked. An obvious example is a hospital. Hospitals require all-year round cooling in surgery rooms or to keep vital IT equipment such as MRI scanners running. Heating is required to keep patients comfortable and there is always demand for domestic hot water. If we equip the building with a heat recovery chiller, it will generate hot water as a by-product of the chilled water system. The system can provide heating when there is a demand, whilst using, or when not simultaneously required, storing the cooling energy through use of ice banks. This helps connect the heating and cooling demands within a 24-hour span. Advanced energy e ciency Heat pumps oer significant energy savings because of their inherently ecient heating technology. Still, not every heat pump oers the same results. Water-to-water heat pump can reach Seasonal Coecient of Performance (SCOP)