Heat Emission Impact from Industries and Sustainable Mitigation Strategies

Abstract

The industrial sector is the largest contributor to anthropogenic (fabricated) thermal energy waste through heat energy loss, contributing an estimated 25–40% of the total energy from fuels consumed by industries to the environment in the form of low-quality heat waste. In this paper we have compiled an extensive database of the sectoral heat emission profiles for eight major industries (iron and steel, cement, chemicals, petroleum refining, glass manufacturing, pulp and paper, food processing, textiles), and evaluated the technical and economic feasibility of twelve different technologies for recovering and mitigating industrial heat waste. A new scoring matrix that incorporates thermal recovery efficiency, the capital cost of implementation, the length of payback period associated with each option, the potential for CO 2 emission reductions from each option, and the complexity of implementing each option was created to evaluate the available mitigation options for industrial heat waste. The scoring matrix was used to rank the available mitigation opportunities for industrial heat waste, and develop projections of the combined effects of the mitigation options for three decarbonization scenarios (business-as-usual, moderate adoption, accelerated adoption) through the year 2040. The findings demonstrate that implementing a combination of high-efficiency heat exchangers, organic Rankine cycle (ORC) systems, and industrial heat pumps across 45% of industries could achieve a reduction in global industrial thermal emissions by 31.4% by 2035, which translates to a reduction of 2.1 Gt CO 2 -eq annually.