Revolutionary heat pump technology for industry

New technology creates new applications for waste heat recycling

The Austrian company ecop has developed a heat pump that works in a completely different physical way to previous ones. It uses a 150-year-old process that has never been successfully applied before. The entire system rotates at up to 1,800 revolutions per minute, that´s why it is called “Rotation Heat Pump”. As a result, it requires no refrigerant, is capable of high temperatures and is extremely flexible. It is intended to help make industry more climate-friendly and recycle waste heat.

Heat pumps in industry

Heat generation currently accounts for 74 percent of energy consumption in industrial companies worldwide. 90 percent of this is generated using fossil fuels. At the same time, waste heat equivalent to the annual energy consumption of Italy is released into the atmosphere. This is the largest untapped energy potential in the world.

The industry is under pressure: process heat is increasingly becoming a significant cost factor due to regulatory restrictions and tariffs for CO₂ emissions. These measures are part of the European Union's Green Deal and Fit for 55 package. On the one hand, this makes the use of heat pumps more economical, but on the other hand they are also affected, particularly by the restriction on the use of F-gases (EU Regulation 517/2014, Montreal Protocol). Alternative refrigerants have recently fallen into disrepute due to the fact that, as PFAS, they are "forever chemicals" and therefore very harmful to the environment. Further regulations are therefore under discussion.

Heat pumps with suitable refrigerants can be a solution to both problems if they are able to utilize existing waste heat. On closer inspection, however, it quickly becomes clear that heat pumps in industry have completely different requirements to those in the residential and private sectors. For example, significantly higher temperatures are required, the waste heat and the output temperatures can fluctuate, and larger temperature lifts are required.

Rotation Heat Pump

Conventional heat pumps cannot meet the special requirements and regulatory specifications, or only to a certain extent. New solutions are therefore required. After intensive research and development work (about 200.000 hours of engineering, leading to 68 patents), ecop Technologies GmbH has now made the 150-year-old Joule process usable for a completely different type of heat pump - the Rotation Heat Pump.

Previous concepts had failed due to the fact that an extremely high compression efficiency is required for a techno-economically viable Joule process. The new heat pump achieves this by rotating the entire process - hence the name "Rotation Heat Pump". The rotor has a diameter of about 2 meters and rotates at up to 1.800 revolutions per minute - this creates enormous centrifugal forces.

   

Single-phase thermodynamic cycle process

The special feature of this counterclockwise Joule process (also known as the Brayton process) is that it is a single-phase thermodynamic cycle process - the working medium remains gaseous throughout. One of the main advantages of this is that an inert gas mixture obtained from the air can be used as the working medium instead of an environmentally harmful refrigerant. It has a GWP (global warming potential) of 0, is non-toxic and non-flammable and is therefore not subject to any regulatory restrictions.

    

Cyclical operation results in a highly efficient and linearly controllable thermodynamic process, which has the following outstanding features and advantages over conventional heat pump technology:

1. Higher achievable temperatures (up to 200 °C)
2. Very high flexibility - different operating states with the same machine
3. Large temperature range possible (up to 55 Kelvin within one process)
4. Highly efficient at all temperature levels (COP between 4.0 and 7.0 depending on application)
5. Significant source cooling possible
6. Environmentally friendly and safe

   

Scalable technology

The current model “K7” has a maximum capacity of 700 kW but the technology can be easily scaled and ecop is already working on a 2 MW version. The technology has been certified, evaluated by external partners and integrated into research projects. For example, it was proven that the efficiency ("Coefficient of Performance" - COP) remains practically constant regardless of the temperature level. This is very remarkable because heat pumps are usually optimized for exactly one temperature range.

In the industry, however, there are often changing conditions. For example, the temperature of the waste heat can fluctuate, but also different output temperatures can be required, e.g. for drying processes that start at high temperatures, which are then gradually reduced. The temperature level is therefore changed only via the control system of the plant; no conversions or modifications to the machine are required.

   

Saving potential

The relevance for industry is very high. Studies show that around 40 percent of the heat required in industry is in the range up to 200 °C, for example for steam generation, drying or sterilization processes. This applies to a wide range of sectors, such as the energy and construction industries, the paper and textile industries, food and beverage production, chemicals and metal processing.

However, there are also fields of application in the production of green hydrogen or the optimization of solar thermal energy - and thus in the combination of various future technologies.

The gas and emission saving potential of ecop technology is huge and could be a game changer for the industry. Each machine saves 2.500 tons of CO₂ per year - compared to a gas burner. According to our market studies, the total market for waste heat recovery in Europe for the temperature range between 100 and 200 °C is around 100 TWh in industry and almost as much again for district heating. We assume that we could generate around 10 TWh of energy per year with Rotation Heat Pumps. Generating this energy with natural gas would require one billion cubic meters of natural gas per year in Europe alone, which could be substituted by Rotation Heat Pump technology.

In addition, generating this heat with gas would release 3.2 million tons of CO₂, which can be saved if the Rotation Heat Pump is operated with 100 percent renewable energy. On a global level, there is a reduction potential of approx. 300 billion m³ of natural gas per year and approx. 1 GT of CO₂ emissions - which corresponds to 2 percent of global CO₂ emissions - with just one technology!

Potential projects

Of course, there is still a long way to go. ecop is at the beginning of this development, there are two plants in operation: one for ongoing testing and demonstration purposes, another has been running for two years at a district heating provider, where the condenser cooling required for electricity generation is used to increase the flow temperature. This was previously released into the ambient air as waste heat.

The potential projects are diverse. More than 200 concrete project inquiries have been received - production capacities are currently being massively expanded accordingly. However, research and development will always remain the core of ecop. There is demand for other performance classes and concepts for the further development of the technology. And finally, the technology can also be used for cooling - so the long-term goal is "rotation chillers".