scale heat recovery can be found in many Danish supermarkets. The supermarket heat recovery cases clearly show that it makes good sense to capture even a small amount of waste heat and make it available for others to use 2 . D) There are no options to deliver it to anyone who can use it. Yes, this is true in many cases, and it is complex and even time- dependent! We would, however, argue that this is still a poor excuse, as one should expect that initiatives like mandatory heat planning and a requirement to assess the feasibility of district energy systems in urban areas in the European Union will be the norm around the globe in the future. With proper heat planning, current and future local heat sources and heat demands are mapped to create a long-term holistic approach to fulfilling local thermal demands. As heat planning becomes more widely adopted, new opportunities will arise. Opportunities can emerge either through establishing city- wide district energy systems or through area zoning and local microgrids, where smart city planners designate areas for industrial processes with low-temperature waste heat next to areas with industries with low-temperature heat demands. While waste heat has a great potential for fulfilling building space heating and hot water demands other use cases could be onshore fish farming, greenhouses, spa facilities, etc. E) It is too complicated to capture it! Fortunately, the notion that heat recovery is complicated is, in most instances, wrong! While it can be difficult to retrofit new means to capture the waste heat in existing constructions, whether in a tightly optimized industry production hall, an old subway station, or elsewhere, it might not be necessary. In most industry processes, existing cooling systems ensure that the industry process is running smoothly and that products are produced with consistent quality. In essence, this means that the waste heat is already being captured; it is just not used for anything. In other instances, the waste heat is dissipated directly into the air, particularly if it has really high temperatures. Such examples can be found in metal smelting operations. Capturing such waste heat is a bit more complex, but even in these cases, there are commercially available methods. Similarly, in any commercial cooling system, whether in a large building, supermarket, or data center, there is no way around having a chiller system that generates the required cooling. Again, this means that the waste heat from commercial operations that require cooling will be available in a central location.
a core business of manufacturing companies. To facilitate waste heat utilization, creating new and motivating business models is necessary. Appropriate business models can, on the one hand, create the foundation for the waste heat owners to integrate waste heat recovery into their production processes and, on the other hand, provide the foundation for establishing specialized waste heat recovery companies that can bridge the gap between the waste heat owners and eventual heat users, for example, district heating utilities. Typically, the business setup involves the waste heat owner, who can be considered a heat supplier or a cooling customer, and a counterpart, who can be either a heat customer or a cooling supplier. Where district heating networks are present, the utility is the obvious counterpart. Depending on the business model, the district heating utility could either buy the heat for a substitution price, which could reflect the lowest cost of an alternative heat source, or sell cooling to the waste heat owner, which could reflect the alternative cost of dissipating the waste heat. The choice of the business model will depend on various factors, such as waste heat temperature, accessibility, availability, investing entity, etc. A common denominator for waste heat is that the cost of the waste heat will be low, as it will always be measured against the lowest-cost alternative heat generation, which can either be existing or planned heat sources. Due to the wide variety of waste heat sources and district heating system setups, the business opportunity should be investigated in each case to ensure long-term viability and minimum risks for all partners. Today, many concrete examples of reusing waste heat in district heating systems exist 1 . The learning from these examples provides a strong basis for adapting regulations and reporting obligations to ensure simple and favorable conditions for utilizing this important low-carbon resource. C) Once we have modernized our processes, there will be so little waste heat that it is not worth capturing. Everyone should embrace this statement and jump on the energy efficiency train. However, all processes have unavoidable waste heat—the last step should always be heat recovery for secondary usage! The first step should always be to energy-optimize processes. The second should be to reuse as much waste heat as possible internally. The third should be to export/sell the remaining waste heat for other purposes. After all, if companies do not ensure that they have an economic operation, someone else will eventually outperform them and potentially put them out of business. It is important to note that waste heat recovery is not only viable for large-capacity sources. Heat recovery from supermarkets is a perfect example of how even small-scale waste heat recovery is economically attractive. A great example of successful small-
1 Danfoss whitepaper: The world’s largest untapped energy source: Excess heat. Danfoss Impact, vol. 2, 2023. https://www.whyenergyefficiency.com/solutions/allsolutions/the-worlds-largest-untapped-energy-source-excess-heat 2 Supermarkets turned into heat suppliers. https://www.danfoss.com/en/service-and-support/case-stories/cf/danish-supermarkets-turned-into-heat-suppliers/
11 www.dbdh.dk
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