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Study / Very high temperature heat recovery in industry

France is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. To achieve this goal, one of the levers is better recovery of the waste heat dissipated by industry during product manufacturing stages. A study carried out by ADEME in 2017 identified a considerable source of energy lost in thermal form - this energy coming from manufacturing processes.

It appears that a large part of this quantity of heat offers the advantage of being already channeled (chimney) at the exit of thermal processes before being evacuated to the atmosphere. In the vast majority of cases, it is therefore possible to capture this "free" energy just before it is dissipated into the atmosphere - especially since the high temperature level, generally > 200 °C, allows a wide range of technological solutions for heat recovery. From a market point of view, these solutions are still too little deployed - especially among small and medium-sized companies.

The objective is therefore to increase awareness of heat recovery technologies available to industry and to remove the many obstacles to implementation and investment: lack of knowledge of the technologies available, of energy and decarbonization issues, and even of accessible financing, or even the fears of industry about the medium-term sustainability of installations.

The study focused on three areas :
  • An inventory of available heat recovery technologies,
  • A technical and economic analysis of the conditions for the implementation of these technologies on industrial sites in the form of 6 specific technology sheets,
  • An analysis of energy issues to identify promising industries in terms of deployment of these recovery solutions.
The study focused on mature technologies (TRL 7) that are commercially accessible to industry.

Executive summary