- A quick tour of industrial heat – by Dr Rosie Barnes
- Share and Breakdown of Global Industrial heat
- Thermal batteries can store peaks in wind and solar
- Sand can heat up to 600 C and store heat for month
- Australia’s MGA startup interviewed by Engineering with Rosie
- Rondo thermal bricks store industrial heat up to 1500 C – lose less than 1% heat per day
- Mobile heat blocks
- This one is just BONKERS!
A quick tour of industrial heat – by Dr Rosie Barnes
I’m a visual learner – so rather than pages of text – I recommend watching 16 minutes of Engineer Rosie Barns explaining these sectors and their requirements. (But I break it and other sources down further with plenty of links under the next paragraph.)
Share and Breakdown of Global Industrial heat
30% Low-temp heat: below 150 °C – boiling, pasteurising, sterilising, cleaning, drying, washing, bleaching, paper manufacture, steaming, pickling, cooking.
Use heat pumps! Heat pumps are awesome because they are so energy efficient. As soon as I hear “energy efficient” my brain hears “BORING!” But think of it this way. Instead of needing 1 part solar energy to replace 1 part coal, heat pumps allow 1 part solar to replace 4 TIMES as much coal! Instead of sacrificing the solar electricity itself as heat as in a resistance coil (like on an old stove top or in your toaster) at 1 part electricity to 1 part heating ratio, heat pumps move existing heat around. Air conditioners gather heat from inside a building and take it outside to cool – reverse cycle air conditioning gathers it from outside and brings it inside to warm a house in winter. In the same way industrial heat pumps can be used to boil water and pasteurise milk. Many regular heat pumps can now hit 120 °C. Heat pumps can also boost existing waste heat. Say a factory has a few rooms with different functions. If one has waste heat at about 100 °C, they can throw that waste heat into a heat pump and get more energy and profit out of it boosting it to 150 or 200 °C for some extra process.
Above these temperatures is outside the range of heat pumps, but we can use abundant renewable electricity to get to some crazy high temperatures.
22% Medium-temp heat: 150 to 400 °C – distilling, nitrate melting, dyeing, compression.
We can blast through medium heat temperatures easily with simple resistance heaters. These are a bit like what you see in your kettle or toaster or stove top – but BIGGER. They can take us well into the high temperature range – up to 800 °C.
48% High-temp heat: above 400 °C – material transformation processes like smelting metals out of ores (iron, steel, aluminium etc), concrete, plastics, high-temperature electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen, etc.
Above 800 °C we enter the world of electric-arc furnaces used in aluminium smelters and electric steel mills. Generally, 3 graphite rods are poked into some scrap metal or metal ore, and then electric arcs buzz between the 3 rods at high temperature – melting the metal. As the wiki says – “Industrial electric arc furnace temperatures can reach 1,800 °C (3,300 °F), while laboratory units can exceed 3,000 °C (5,400 °F).” There are even youtube videos on how to make one in your garage. There are also induction furnaces, microwaves (for niche industrial services) and plasma arc torches – which I discuss on my gasification page.
But that’s it. There’s no mystery about how we’re going to continue industrial heating processes without fossil fuels. (Coking coal as an ingredient in making steel is discussed under green steel.)
Thermal batteries can store peaks in wind and solar
Some renewable sceptics complain that if we Overbuild wind and solar to get through winter, we’ll waste the excess power in spring and summer. Yet thermal batteries can be built to store district heating to help European neighbourhoods get through winter, or even store heat for some high temperature industrial purposes. Given industrial heat alone is about a third of global energy use, there may just be a few trillion dollars in finding economical ways to store very low cost excess wind and solar for a literal rainy day.
Sand can heat up to 600 C and store heat for month
Good for New Urban districts connected up with heating systems, and some lower grade heat industrial tasks
Australia’s MGA startup interviewed by Engineering with Rosie
Rondo thermal bricks store industrial heat up to 1500 C – lose less than 1% heat per day
John O’Donnell from Rondo
Dave Borlace from Just Have a Think
Also hear the August 2023 Energy Insiders podcast when the team interview Tom Geiser from Rondo Energy. Bottom line? His thermal bricks store heat at about 1500 degrees C! And they only lose 1% of their heat per day. If an industrial process requires more heat, they might either link to the national grid for more power, or build more solar and thermal batteries out at some remote site.
Mobile heat blocks
This one is just BONKERS!
This one uses liquid metal tin that feeds thermal energy into thermo-photovoltaic cells dipped in the molten tin!
But even if it doesn’t pan out – some of the tech involved might help other industrial heat processes go renewable. And if it does pan out…
Eclipse Now 
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