Effective use of waste heat

Principal investigator: Jiří Hejtmánek
Project title: Effective use of waste heat
Operational programme: Prague - Growth Pole of the Czech Republic
Provider: City of Prague
Priority axis: 07.1 Strengthening research, technological development and innovation
Project number: CZ.07.1.02/0.0/0.0/16_040/0000384
Time period: 1/1/2018 – 30/6/2020
Total costs: 9,842,631.83 CZK
EU co-financing rate: 50%

Annotation

The aim of the project is to develop innovative equipment that will help to exploit the energy losses in the management of primary energy sources and the subsequent commercialization of specific technologies, which will increase the efficiency of waste heat management. Waste heat currently accounts for about 60% of all energy consumed. From this amount of energy, about 5-8% can be converted to electricity by thermoelectric conversion. The technology of thermoelectric conversion has long been known, but has recently significantly increased its efficiency through the research of new materials and its efficiency can be expected to increase further. The intended output is therefore the lower energy demand of technological equipment, which produces a significant amount of waste heat. These activities will be implemented in particular in segments where the expected technologies can be effectively deployed, such as transport, building management and waste disposal. In particular, we plan a detailed mapping of energy inputs, operating temperatures, heat flows and potentials, and hence possible thermal leakage in the relevant technologies, which can be divided into three basic segments:

1. Mobile waste heat sources (technology based on modern combustion power aggregates of urban and suburban buses).
2. Low-potential sources (this technology is characterized by low temperature gradients, but with the possibility of overall high energy heat flows, such as large data centers and server rooms).
3. High-potential sources (this technology is characterized by high temperatures and high heat flows. These are stationary sources serving either directly or indirectly for the production of heat where technologies are based on modern high-temperature combustion with high efficiency, such as waste incineration plants).