Brunel to cut industrial energy waste
© Silberfuchs

Brunel to cut industrial energy waste

Brunel University London, UK, is set to lead a new £700,000 (~€775,600) project to cut energy waste in Europe’s ceramics, steel and aluminium industries.

Energy-hungry industries such as metal, steel and ceramics production spend around 40% of running costs on energy and fuels and emit serious quantities of CO2.

Supported by the Horizon 2020 programme, Project ETEKINA, (Heat Pipe Technology for Thermal Energy Recovery in Industrial Applications) will launch in October.

Brunel will design three heat pipe-based heat exchangers, to be made by UK firm ECONOTHERM and tested in Spain, Slovenia and Italy.

Led by Hussam Jouhara at the Institute of Energy Futures, the Brunel team is the project’s technical co-ordinator. They need to overcome challenges such as space, transport and integrating heat from separate processes and corrosive waste heat sources.

The heat recovery systems they’ll develop will need to be safe, self-cleaning and have online monitoring and use the same mechanical design.

Jouhara said: “ETEKINA could be easily used in 296 industries where it has potential applications in plastic and chemical production. The potential for heat pipes is exponentially growing with a substantial annual energy saving.”