Key points
The manufacturing industry in the UK is responsible for a significant amount of the country's total energy use, being the third-largest carbon contributor after energy production and transport. As the industry continues to grow, it becomes increasingly important to consider improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon footprint in manufacturing processes.
Heating and cooling accounts for UK’s and Europe’s biggest energy use, which means that implementing energy efficiency strategies to temperature control applications offer a great potential to reduce that demand.
Energy is the largest operating expense in industry, accounting for the majority of utility costs. With rising energy prices, investing in energy efficiency can provide real savings, ensure superior process performance and real financial outcomes.
It is also the right thing to do. Decarbonisation of heavy industrial processes is central to reaching the Government’s target to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the UK by 2050. Considering energy efficiency measures in all aspects of industrial processes will contribute to the decarbonisation efforts, reduce costs and down the line improve the competitiveness of the UK industry.
The right approach to thermal systems, leveraging process cooling and heating innovation like heat recovery technologies or solutions making simultaneous cooling and heating possible, are all essential components in achieving these sustainability and efficiency goals, reducing energy consumption, and improving the manufacturing processes overall.
Understand your system thoroughly.
To get a true picture of all areas that need addressing, the best starting point and most informative and comprehensive approach is to undertake an energy analysis audit carried out by the partner with good technical knowledge of the plant’s applications and expertise in temperature control equipment.
Ideally the partner should be capable to design or redesign the cooling and heating thermal systems and be also able to act as the service provider. Such partnership opens the door to equipment tailored to the process’ needs and generates opportunities to enhance the temperature control systems.
An energy audit records the existing energy use as well as usage patterns. It identifies opportunities for energy saving strategies, including technology replacements. Finding opportunities for energy, sustainability and efficiency gains in case of equipment in operation isn’t easy, and decisions on what and how to improve need to be based on hard data.
Now let’s look at a few solutions that could emerge from an energy audit as recommendations for the process cooling and heating thermal systems.
The power of heat pumps.
Over the last few years, innovation in cooling and heating has progressed immensely. Today’s technologies offer significant environmental and energy benefits, compared to the ones that they are designed to replace like the fossil-fuelled heating.
While heat pumps were traditionally known for their residential applications, many industrial processes now benefit from heat pumps as an efficient heating solution for a wide range of processes, recognising the economic and emission reduction benefits.
Heat pumps rely on one of the most energy-efficient methods of heating: the transfer of free thermal energy from outside to inside based on the difference in temperature between the two. What not everybody in the industry does though is look at cooling and heating at once. There are new opportunities ahead if we start looking at heating from the cooling perspective and the opposite.
Heating, cooling, heating while cooling, heating or cooling – we can make choices to satisfy heating and cooling demands in practically any application. Different heating demand profiles come with efficiency opportunities and allow for significant improvements by choosing the right heat pump solution – allowing also to combine it with other technologies.
Simultaneous heating and cooling – the multi-pipe chillers.
The best way to save energy is to not use it, however, if you must use it – the second best way to save energy is to recover and repurpose it. Heat pumps and multi-pipe chillers are an example of product development that can create a sustainable heating sector, contribute to mitigating climate change and massively reducing processes’ carbon footprint.
The design of the multi-pipe systems allows the manufacturers to achieve temperature control and sustainability goals at the same time. Manufacturers can benefit from the simplicity of the system, which provides both heating and cooling from one single unit. In place of a traditional chiller with an additional boiler, installing the multi-pipe system also brings financial incentives in form of lower investment costs.
Multi-pipe systems recover the energy by shifting use from a separate boiler and chiller to one single, simplified multi-pipe unit that simultaneously delivers hot and chilled water. This thermal system repurposes rejected energy, or uses renewable energy, for heating the facility, creating a more sustainable solution that reduces the amount of investment costs, use of floor space and total operating expenses.
Featuring two completely independent water circuits, the units can ensure precise temperature control for both leaving chilled and hot water. For the production of hot water, the units use renewable and recovered energy, and can replace existing fossil-fuel boiler and chiller systems to deliver both cooling and heating for the processes with no direct greenhouse gas emissions.
To boost the hot water temperature to the levels desired by the process applications, multi-pipe chillers can be paired with Industrial Free Heating (i-FH) water-to-water heat pumps offering an efficient alternative for gas or oil fuelled boilers and compatibility with geothermal applications. With new generation, low global warming potential HFO refrigerants, you can achieve temperatures of even 120°C.
Annual energy consumption for multi-pipe systems is much lower than in the case of comparable conventional thermal systems. The use of renewable energy, when operating in heat pump mode, is one of the contributors. The lower footprint of one unit also contributes to reduced use of floor space and lower total operating costs with only one unit to maintain instead of a separate chiller and boiler.
Harnessing and reusing heat from cooling.
A cooling system is fundamentally about heat transfer – taking away the heat created by your process or application and transferring it to help cool the system.
Often the waste heat is rejected to the atmosphere, but it is possible to recycle this waste heat from the cooling systems and re-use it for other areas of your process or facility. It is possible to recover up to 70% of potentially wasted electrical heat energy. The recycled heat can be easily used in other areas of your process and factory and to provide hot water for domestic purposes including work kitchens and bathrooms.
Process cooling is required all year round, 24/7. Hot water needs for sterilisation and/or for producing tap water are simultaneous requirements. Heating is still typically covered by boilers producing steam or hot water, but chillers cool down in the same process or building and always reject this energy as “waste” heat, which is then too often wasted. This creates great opportunities.
While pure heating heat pump solutions require external (sustainable) heat sources such as air or (ground) water, combined heating and cooling applications provide unique opportunity to reclaim or harvest energy available within the same plant or building.
The waste heat energy from cooling can be harnessed effectively and re-used by heat recovery at medium temperature for space heating, preheating water, etc. or the recovered energy can be boosted up to 120°C with High Temperature Heat Pumps for other processes.
Combining Heat Recovery from chillers with a booster heat-pump opens an untapped opportunity to lower overall energy demand and reduce CO2 emissions. Low temperature processes such as in Food and Beverages production are large thermal efficiency opportunities when using heat recovery and heat pump boosters.
Conclusion
Given the process-heavy nature of the UK’s industrial landscape, getting a firm grip of a plant’s temperature control thermal systems can quickly result in a reduction of energy consumption and consequently, utility bills.
Energy efficiency, reliability, sustainability, options for customisation and TCO all play a role in finding the right heating solution that best fits your needs. With technologies available at our fingertips to massively increase the efficiency of processes or buildings, we shouldn’t second-guess the opportunities we have.
Start by calling your temperature control partner and undertake an energy analysis audit for a true picture of all areas that need to be addressed to improve your energy efficiency and reduce your overall costs.
