Towards enhanced energy efficiency via heat recovery and thermal innovations

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Waste heat includes all forms of heat escaping from a system. To be qualified of "waste", heat losses should not be the primary purpose of that given system. Since the amount of heat that is lost everywhere is tremendous, recovering even a small portion of it could have a tremendous impact on the environment, the society and the economy. The present research program aims at overcoming some of the most limiting barriers to the use waste heat recovery (WHR) systems. The program has thus been divided into two themes to address specific families of barriers. The first theme of the program explores how to implement optimally waste heat recovery systems into large and complex systems. A new framework is proposed in order to do that. It is then used to study the impact of uncertain parameters such as the future of the economic environment as well as the concept of collaborative “thermal grids” in which many industries or users can be connected. The second theme of the program focuses on the development and improvement of three particular types of equipment or technology, namely smart shells to capture heat escaping from a surface, innovative latent heat storage units with phase change materials for low temperature heat storage, and morphing thermodynamic power cycles. The program is oriented towards the development of new modeling approaches and multi-objective optimization strategies related to WHR systems. It aims at providing a deeper understanding of some of the most limiting factors preventing WHR to be more widely used.