Dino Grandoni
THE WASHINGTON POST – Forget about Oompa Loompas. The real heroes of the world’s largest chocolate bar factory are the heat pumps.
A heat pump system at Mars’ factory in Veghel, Netherlands, harvests heat radiating from its refrigerators to produce hot water. Channelling it through the factory’s network of pipes, the confectioner uses what would otherwise be wasted energy to help keep its syrup warm and chocolate molten.
For years, heat pumps have been used as an energy-efficient alternative to fossil-fuel-powered furnaces to warm and cool homes, especially in eco-conscious Europe.
Now with pressure to move away from fossil fuels rising, factories around the world are turning to the technology to make food, dry paper and perform other industrial tasks that would otherwise require burning fossil fuels for energy.
“Industry is now aware of the possibilities of what they can achieve with heat pumps,” said senior research engineer at the Austrian Institute of Technology Veronika Wilk, who studies industrial heat pumps.
“This is definitely a difference compared to five or seven years before,” she added.
HEAT PUMPS ON FACTORY FLOOR
Globally, the market for industrial heat pumps is expected to nearly double over the next decade as demand for low-carbon energy increases and nations strive to meet emissions-reduction goals and, particularly in Europe, reduce their demand for Russian gas, according to the research firm Global Market Insights.
“This is now getting more and more interest when we talk about security of supply,” the senior research engineer said.
In homes, heat pumps often pump heat from deep underground, or from the air outside, into a living place to keep it nice and toasty in the winter.
The industrial version is much bigger, often recycling energy from one industrial process and using it in another. By redirecting heat from its refrigerators to keep its chocolate piping hot, Mars’ Dutch chocolate factory lowered its energy bill by six per cent, company spokesman Roel Govers said. So far, the factory has installed two heat pumps – the first in 2015 and the second by 2021.
Heat pumps are also proving useful for paper and chemical manufacturing in addition to the food industry. Nearly 30 per cent of the three sectors’ combined heating needs globally can be met with heat pumps, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
CHALLENGE OF DECARBONISING FACTORIES
Nowhere is the trend more obvious than in Europe, where manufacturers and municipalities are on edge about potentially being cut off from Russian gas supplies. In countries such as Germany and Finland, rising gas prices over the past few years have strengthened the business case for heat pumps.
Industrial heat pumps can be found off the factory floor, too, to keep entire neighbourhoods and cities warm. A Danish utility is aiming to deploy big pumps to extract heat from seawater to warm the city of Esbjerg, and authorities in Vienna want to pull energy from wastewater to heat households through the Austrian winter.
The United States (US) lags Europe in the installation of heat pumps both big and small.
Only recently have heat pump sales outpaced those for gas furnaces nationwide. “It is starting to pick up in industry as well,” manager in the Rocky Mountain Institute’s carbon-free buildings programme Lacey Tan said of US demand.
“Industry is probably the more challenging one,” she added, noting the high temperatures and pressures at which the heat pumps need to run in factories. The machines, though, have limitations. Many materials, including cement, steel, glass, bricks and tiles, are manufactured at very high temperatures.
Anything requiring a kiln above approximately 400 degrees Fahrenheit is more difficult to decarbonise via heat pumps, according to Wilk.
But to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement, factories must deploy heat pumps rapidly, she added.
To have a chance of achieving net-zero emissions by the middle of the century, industry needs to install around 500 megawatts of heat pumps every month for the next 30 years, according to the IEA.
