Heat Recovery

Industrial

Certain industrial processes discharge a colossal amount of heat, which has the potential of being converted to another less useful form of energy and therefore wasted. In a situation such as this one where an industrial process, which has sufficiently high running costs is wasting such vast amounts of energy, a heat recovery system will help alleviate these problems.

Principles of Heat Recovery

The actual method of recovering this heat is through the use of a heat exchange, which is the more effective system for heat recovery and has been known to save up to and including 70% of the energy which would otherwise be channelled out of the structure and wasted. This heat exchange uses the intake of fresh, cool air into the building to pick up the heat of the hot air that is simultaneously to be released out of the building and into the atmosphere. The two streams of air are passed over each other however they are separated by multiple layers of aluminium (sometimes stainless steel), which are thin enough to exchange the heat energy.

A Typical Heat Recovery System

In a situation where an industrial process is discharging a lot of heat, for example a cake production facility it is important to manage the heat extraction but also consider recovering that heat to be reused again and again.

The theoretical layout of a typical environment, which would directly benefit from a heat recovery system and looks similar to the above illustration. There are usually four different channels for air flow, which are directly conncted to the heat exchanger:

This is the plan view of a standard 'exchange' in a heat recovery system.

The Core

From the illustration above you can see the basic construction of the heat exchanger and where the core literally slots into the device on an angle.

The core, which goes in the centre of the heat exchanger is constructed of multiple overlapped channels, which allow the two streams to closely pass over each other. The close proximity of the 'waste' oxygen leaving the building and the fresh oxygen flowing back in to the building across thin layers of aluminium provides an easy transfer of heat between the two. This is one of the most effective methods of recovering and reusing the heat, which would otherwise be wasted!