Capturing and reusing waste heat

Many of the world’s industries have been recovering heat from exhaust gases for decades. Take metal or plastics processing, for example. In both cases, producers commonly recover heat from flue gases emitted from the production process and either reuse it or convert it into electrical energy or steam. 

Yet these same industries continue to leave one of the largest opportunities for heat recovery on the table.

In the December 2021 issue of Process Heating magazine, Solex Energy Science CEO Neville Jordison discusses how high-temperature bulk solid materials remain one of the largest and untapped sources of energy for cogeneration – the conversion of waste heat into useful process heat or electricity – that can be realized through the combined use of moving bed heat exchange technology (MBHE) and the organic Rankin cycle (ORC) process, for example.  

In the article, Jordison details how MBHEs that use vertical plate technology play a key role in taking the thermal energy from high-temperature bulk solids and, then, supplying it to an ORC plant where it is converted into electricity.

In addition, he details both the benefits and additional considerations when combining both MBHE and ORC technologies, including:

• Reduced overall energy consumption
• Reduced water consumption (if the bulk materials were previously being water quenched)
• Minimal risk exposure/realistic payback period
• Thermal to energy conversion is not 1:1. Therefore, industries with the most to gain are ones with high throughputs such as the iron, steel and cement.

Learn more by downloading a pdf version of the full story in Process Heating magazine.