Heat From Factories Recovered | Green Energy News

November 21, 2004 – Vol.9 No.35

HEAT FROM FACTORIES - RECOVERED.

Imagine a glassworks as a source of green energy. How about commercial bakery? Or perhaps computer chip manufacturing plant? A potato chip factory? A restaurant kitchen?

Many factories or production facilities use high levels of thermal energy - heat - to complete a production process. On the mass production scale it takes a considerable amount of energy to bake a loaf of bread, deep fry a thin slice of potato or melt glass into window panes or wine goblets.

Yet for the most part factories release as much heat as they can into the atmosphere to make the facilities comfortable for workers. Smoke stacks and ventilation systems don’t just spew smoke and fumes into the air; they spew unwanted hot air.

The source of that heat, by the way, was also purchased as energy from the grid, by the tank, pipeline or truckload or rail car. The money spent for energy needed in production literally goes up the chimney, out the window or blown away through a vent stack. (Of course the work the energy does creates the finished product; the box of cookies, a silicon computer chip.)

But if a factory operator were savvy enough he’d find a way to reclaim that wasted heat - that wasted energy he just paid for - and put it back to work or resell to those who need it.

Innovative Energy Solutions (iESi) has entered into a strategic partnership with Norwood Foundry to begin the engineering, development and operation of iESi’s clean energy technology for use in a Norwood production facility in Alberta, Canada.

In the project iESi will capture waste heat from Norwood’s metal working operations and convert it to electricity. Waste thermal energy from molten iron will be used to generate steam which will then be used to turn turbines and generate electricity.

Since Norwood doesn’t need the additional electricity in its operations it will sell the electricity - an expected 10 megawatts of power - to the grid.

Norwood uses electric induction furnaces to melt iron feedstock used in its cast iron facility. The melting of iron and other metals with electric induction furnaces releases few if any emissions in the process. It seems surprisingly green.

Aside from low emissions, power sold can be considered green in another way. The thermal energy would have been wasted anyway - put into the atmosphere. But when sold to the grid, Norwood’s electricity-from-waste-heat will displace electricity from other sources, possibly fossil fuel sources. In other words, electricity that is sold is from savings in energy efficiency.

How many opportunities are there in industry to capture waste heat and put it to work increasing efficiencies, earning new revenues, and displacing energy from other sources?

Visit Innovative Energy Solutions at http://www.iESiUSA.com/ , Norwood Foundry at http://www.norwoodfoundry.com/ . (Note to engineers. iESi has an interesting return on investment (ROI) calculator for thermal energy savings at its website.)