Tackling issues of waste heat

Industry is responsible for 32 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile in heavy industry between 20-50 per cent of energy input is lost as waste heat. This energy is already paid for by the factories in their energy bills and is purely and simply wasted via their chimneys by being ejected into the atmosphere.  
Even worse, is that, often supplementary parasitic energy is required to cool down fumes before filtering the flue gas. In other words, more energy and more money is spent to dispose of waste heat. One solution is called waste heat recovery (WHR).

If we consider waste heat only above 150°C, it represents roughly 2,600 TWh of energy per year worldwide, the equivalent of 31 times the UAE yearly energy demand, or the future annual production of 53 Barakah Nuclear Energy Plants. By recovering this “free” energy, we could potentially save about 1,800 million tonnes of CO2 per year worldwide to help in the fight against climate change. 

This concerns many industries such as the primary metal industry (iron, steel, or aluminium, etc.), but also the ceramic, glass, cement or petro-chemistry industries, that are all already present in the UAE. The idea is to install heat exchangers by way of the exhaust flue gas to recover thermal energy by cooling down the fumes. This thermal energy can be stored, transferred, and re-injected as process heat, or can power a heat engine to produce carbon-free electricity or cooling in the client’s industrial site.  

Seramic is a start-up company established in the Masdar City Free Zone in October 2018. Our ambition is to drive energy intensive industry towards a more sustainable future. We are developing a unique eco-economy model by enhancing energy efficiency in industrial processes, reducing carbon emissions, and recycling industrial waste into value-added products.  It is important to note that we are technology agnostic. Indeed, Seramic is performing a technical energy audit (TEA) on our clients’ sites to propose the best technology adapted to their needs. 

Then we offer turn-key solutions that preserve the industrial process integrity, using only proven equipment. We are across all stages of the project, from the TEA, to the proposal and design of the solution, until the commissioning. Finally, we take care of the operation & maintenance so the client can continue to focus on what they do best, while we concentrate on developing energy projects.  

Our business model includes the capital investment so the client doesn’t even have to invest one cent. Very often, the clients have already thought about energy efficiency solutions in their plants as they are effected by any energy commodity bill increase, which affects the cost of their final products and makes their factory less competitive. 

However, often these companies and businesses prefer to invest in what they already know rather than investing in something they are not familiar with, which is energy. Seramic and its partners solve this issue by investing for the client and the resulting savings are then shared. It’s a win-win-win situation. We are developing a profitable eco-business, the client saves money on its monthly energy bill, and at the same time we are protecting the environment by decarbonizing heavy industry.

As an example, we are developing a first project in Abu Dhabi where the client will save about 10 per cent of its yearly carbon emissions and we will produce up to 50 per cent of its electricity consumption usually taken from the grid, to be replaced by the WHR system. 

For further information you can send an email to contact@seramic.eco or visit our website at www.seramic.eco.

By Dr. Nicolas Calvet / Co-founder & CEO of Seramic