Reduce carbon emissions and cut costs with heat recovery

If your company is trying to save costs and reduce your carbon footprint then our blog can help you understand how implementing heat recovery into your compressed air system can do this. Recovering the excess heat from your compressor saves money and reduces your carbon footprint significantly.

Approximately 10% of all electricity used in industry is accounted for by compressed air systems. It’s a thermodynamic fact that around 94% of this energy gets converted to heat. That means up to 94% of the heat energy supplied to the compressor can be recovered. It’s time to take advantage of this converted heat energy and save thousands of pounds every year!

In this blog, we explain what heat recovery is, why you should implement it into your compressed air systems with the benefits and the different applications of heat recovery.

What is heat recovery?

Heat recovery is the process of capturing and utilising the excess heat generated during the compression of air in a compressed air system. By using heat exchangers and other technologies, this heat can be recovered and repurposed for various heating applications within your facility. This means that instead of simply removing the heat, it can be used to generate hot water, heating systems and application processes in other areas of the installation. Implementing heat recovery into your compressed air system can help address these issues of energy wastage and provide a number of benefits for your operations.

Why consider heat recovery?

With growing concerns about climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, implementing heat recovery into your compressed air system is a practical way to do your part in protecting the environment.

Furthermore, implementing heat recovery can also help to improve the overall efficiency of your compressed air system. By capturing and using the excess heat generated during the compression process, you can reduce the energy required to operate the system. This can help to increase the overall efficiency of your compressed air system, ensuring that you get the most out of your energy investment. Improved efficiency can lead to cost savings, increased productivity, and a more sustainable operation overall.

To summarise, here are the key considerations for heat recovery…

• Energy prices contiuing to rise
• Utilising wasted heat in your facility
• Impacts on the environment 
• Short payback times

Why should we focus so much on energy?

1. Compressed air is expensive so re-using the heat somewhere else in your facilities will save energy
2. Energy prices are continuing to increase
3. Environmental concerns are growing along with sustainable development
4. Industries are faced with challenging targets to reduce carbon dioxide emission

Direct Air are here to help turn this waste heat to your advantage, recovering heat will allow you to improve operating costs and save huge amounts of money.

Applications for heat recovery

There are several applications you can choose from with heat recovery. These applications are split into two, oil to water and defined outlet. Heating, hot water and industrial process applications are oil to water heat exchangers and ambient air heating is defined air outlet.

Oil to water heat exchanger:

• Heating – Heat recovery systems are great for augmenting your facilities heating system. By utilising the heat energy from your compressors that would usually go to waste, you can keep your premises warm, reduce your heating bill and cut back on your company’s carbon emissions.
• Hot water – Heat recovery systems can provide up to 72% of the energy required to heat your hot water system. By utilising the heat energy that would otherwise go to waste, you can have running hot water in your facilities.
• Industrial process – Heat recovery systems can also be used to pre-heat the water supplying your process application requirements. Anywhere hot water is required, supplying pre-heated water makes the process more cost efficient and helps re-use this otherwise wasted heat.

Defined air outlet:

• Ambient air heating – The compressors heated cooling air can be utilised to increase the ambient temperatures of rooms instead of being dissipated into the atmosphere. By ducting the air to somewhere it would be more useful, you can increase the ambient temperatures of those rooms and save on their heating costs.