Estimation of waste heat and its recovery potential from energy-intensive industries

The recovery and reuse of waste heat offers a significant opportunity for any country to reduce its overall primary energy usage. Reuse of waste heat improves the ambient air quality by reducing both industrial pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from industries. This paper presents an estimation of thermal waste heat potential in five energy-intensive industrial sectors (i.e., iron and steel, chemical and petrochemical, paper and pulp, cement, and glass), based on data available in the extant literature and government reports. The findings show that both the chemical and petrochemical industries have the highest theoretical waste heat to power generation capacity for the selected industries. In addition, six individual plant data were collected for case study to determine their waste heat potentials. These estimates were further used to identify the power generation potential using the organic Rankine cycle based on economic advantages, whereby the iron and steel industries were found to have the maximum power generation potential of 66.5 TWh using its waste heat. [GRAPHICS] .