What Can Waste Heat Be Used For?

20 Dec What Can Waste Heat Be Used For?

When we think of environmental issues, we often focus on automobiles and electricity production. However, a considerable amount of fuel is spent, along with resulting emissions, by buildings and other industrial facilities.

When operating your industrial boiler in your apartment building, hospital, or brewery, the steam generated through combustion is used to heat your facility and maintain various industrial processes. However, as with any mechanical system, heat is lost in the process. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 20-50% of all industrial energy ends up as waste heat. With energy costs increasing, and emission standards becoming more stringent, managing waste heat is more important than ever.

Waste heat recovery systems are able to capture excess heat and reuse it for heating or other uses. Recovering waste heat becomes an attractive option for facilities working to lower energy costs and to reduce emissions.

What is Waste Heat?

Any time a machine or mechanical device is used, it creates heat. Whether it’s your car’s engine or your building’s boiler, heat is lost when it runs. When this heat is not used directly for your essential processes and is lost to the surrounding environment, this is waste heat. It’s important to harness this waste heat, as doing so can reduce costs, fuel use, and emissions. The goal is to increase efficiency as much as possible.

Ways to Use Waste Heat

In recent years, advancements in technology have allowed us to develop ways to capture waste heat and use it to increase energy efficiency. This includes feedwater economizers, condensing economizers, flue gas collectors, and other methods. Capturing the waste heat allows you to use it for several different applications. The most efficient way to use waste heat is on the site of the boiler.

Generate Electricity

When you capture the waste heat, it can be fed back into the system to contribute to more steam production, which can be used to generate electricity. This reduces the amount of fuel you need to create new steam and electricity for your facility’s operations.

Alternatively, if it’s available to your facility, the electricity can be sent to your local power plant and become a source of revenue.

Heat Your Facility

More commonly, waste heat can be redistributed to control the temperature of your facility. As your boiler and other machinery produce heat while operating, this environmental heat can be managed with fans that redistribute the heat to other areas. This not only reduces the temperature in the operating area but reduces the fuel needed to heat the rest of your building.

Hot Water

Finally, the waste heat can be captured and used to supplement your existing boiler’s process to heat water. This water can be used for your normal operations, including cleaning, sanitation, sterilization, or bathing.

Sustainability at McKenna Boiler

For more than 100 years, McKenna Boiler’s innovative and pioneering mindset has led us to seek sustainable solutions that push the boundaries of current technologies. Sustainability is especially important to McKenna Boiler, and recycling heat is an important way to increase efficiency and reduce fuel needs and resulting emissions.

Partner with McKenna Boiler to Manage Your Waste Heat

Innovation and sustainability are part of McKenna Boiler’s core way of doing business. We look forward to partnering with Plant Managers, Production Engineers, and Maintenance Engineers across all industries to save on costs and emissions. Contact us today to speak to a member of our team to discuss your needs with our experts.