Carbon Trust guide shows how heat recovery can cut energy bills

by Shane Henson — September 12, 2011—Facilities managers frustrated from the heat wasted in the buildings they manage could help reduce their company’s energy bill after putting to use the tips and best practices provided in the Carbon Trust’s Heat Recovery Overview Guide.

The guide includes a range of useful tips. For example:

Refrigeration: In a typical supermarket, heat recovered from refrigeration units could be used to provide 75-90% of the building’s hot water needs—equivalent to 2-3% of its total CO2 emissions. For a typical new build 250-person office, installing a de-superheater to capture heat from cooling equipment could cut £1,000 from gas bills by providing energy for space heating.

Boilers: Using recovered heat to raise the combustion air temperature of a boiler by 20°C increases boiler efficiency by 1%. Boilers lose on average 25% of their heat. Investing £6-8,000 on installing boiler flue economizers in an office with an annual energy outlay of £15,000 could see a payback in four years.

Ventilation: Thermal wheel technology, a heat transfer system based on a rotating wheel with high thermal capacity, can typically recover 65-75% of the heat from a ventilation system, and could pay back the initial investment within two years.

The guide forms part of the Carbon Trust’s Expert in Energy series, which includes the previously published Refrigeration Systems guide.