Success Story No. 10: ETEKINA Project
Heat Recovery and CO2 Emissions Avoidance for Three EIIs Sectors
Technology Implemented in Three Demo Cases
The Challenge
The SET Plan IWG-Ind 2024 Annual Event: Advancing Sustainable Energy in Industry, organised back-to-back with INDTech 2024 in Namur, Belgium, on the 5th of June 2024, featured the ETEKINA project in the session Challenge 2 – Igniting Industrial Innovation: Heat recovery and upgrading in industry and heat2power. Professor Hussam Jouhara from Brunel University, London – the technical coordinator of the project - presented ETEKINA as one valuable tool in addressing that particular challenge that European process industries are facing: waste heat.
The ETEKINA Project
Funded by Horizon 2020 under a SPIRE cPPP call, ETEKINA (full title: heat pipE TECHnology for thermal energy recovery in INdustrial Applications) started in October 2017 and ended on the 31st of March 2022. The project was sparked by the indisputable fact that the production processes of energy-intensive industries require large amounts of heat.
Goals
ETEKINA aimed to demonstrate cost-effective waste heat recovery in industrial applications.
The project proposed a technology based on heat pipes ("thermal superconductors'') that transfer heat, recovering the thermal power that can later be reused in other processes within the same facility.
The ETEKINA project also sought to facilitate market penetration of new heat exchanger technology applications. The project’s key goal was to improve the energy performance of industrial processes by supporting the development of a heat recovery market in the industry. ETEKINA’s aim was to design and implement a technology able to recover more than 40% of the waste heat.
Implementation and Demonstrators
The innovation developed by the project recovers waste heat streams with the help of heat pipe heat exchangers (HPHE).
Addressing two main goals of the project - demonstrating cost-effective waste heat recovery in industrial applications and facilitating market penetration - the solution was implemented in three demonstrators across different energy-intensive industries sectors: non-ferrous metals – aluminium (Fagor Ederlan, Spain), steel (SIJ Metal Ravne, Slovenia), and ceramic (Atlas Concorde, Italy).
A Cross-Sectorial Success Story
Professor Hussam Jouhara confirmed that all three units are still in operation two years after the project’s completion.
Capturing and reusing the thermal power in the three demo-sites resulted in notable CO2 emissions avoidance.
Demonstrator no. 1 (aluminium industry): 90 tonsCO2/year
Demonstrator no. 2 (steel industry): 334 tonsCO2/year
Demonstrator no. 3 (ceramic industry): 500 tonsCO2/year
The Coordinator’s Angle
Professor Jouhara stressed that the design, implementation, and operation of three waste heat recuperation systems based on heat pipe heat exchanger technology in three productive processes of industrial plants is a success story. The intervention in a productive process without altering its productive rate and quality is a great challenge. In this case, the three waste heat recovery demonstrator systems were successfully installed. Furthermore, the project shows the possibility of reducing energy consumption and the emission of CO2 in three industry sectors.
A.SPIRE considers ETEKINA an inspiring project that achieved its goals and developed a groundbreaking technology that tackles a major challenge of the heat-dependent industries and is a potentially valuable tool in achieving the circularity, climate neutrality and competitiveness of the European energy-intensive industries.
Download the leaflet for more information about the October Success Story.
Visit the ETEKINA project’s website.
For more information about A.SPIRE, the Processes4Planet Partnership, and the Success Stories campaign contact the team.
