Effects of process decarbonisation on future targets for excess heat delivery from an industrial process plant

Paper in proceeding, 2020

The use of industrial excess heat for purposes such as district heating has the potential to contribute to societal targets for energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. However, to meet the ambitious national and international climate targets set for 2050, a breadth of different decarboni­sation pathways are required, not least in the industrial sector. These include a transition to bio-based and recycled feedstock and fuels, carbon capture and storage, and electrification. Such profound changes of industrial processes and energy systems are likely to affect the availability of excess heat from these plants, and a better understanding of how the excess heat po­tentials might change is needed in order to utilise excess heat in ways that can be resource-efficient also in the long-term. In this paper, we present a systematic approach which can be used to analyse how different decarbonisation options may af­fect the potential future availability of excess heat at a specific plant site. The approach is based on the use of consistent, ener­gy targeting methods based on pinch analysis tools, and there­fore relies on comprehensive data about process heating and cooling demands. To illustrate the approach, we demonstrate results from two industrial case studies in which different de­carbonisation measures are assumed to be implemented. The case studies were selected from a case study portfolio, which includes relevant and site-specific process and energy data for a large share of Swedish industrial process sites. The results show that deep decarbonisation can have significant impact on the availability and temperature profile of industrial excess heat, illustrating the importance of accounting for future pro­cess development when estimating excess heat potentials.