Eco-industrial parks and waste heat recovery from industrial processes

Overview of the status and impact of the innovation

Innovation

What

Eco-industrial parks are communities of businesses, located on a common property, that collaborate to enhance their combined environmental, economic and social performance. One business can use another’s waste heat, for example, or peak energy demand can be lowered by leveraging synergies between the different electricity consumption profiles of different industrial processes.

Why

Eco-industrial parks offer win-win strategies for improving efficiency; lowering total energy consumption and costs; reducing peak loads; and providing other benefits through shared heat generation, waste heat recovery and other measures.

BOX 6.19 Eco-industrial park in Denmark

The Kalundborg Symbiosis is a partnership between 12 public and private companies in Kalundborg, Denmark. Under the partnership, residues of one company become resources for others. For example, Novo Nordisk and Novozymes send their wastewater to a nearby treatment plant, leading to above-average wastewater temperatures. The heat is then used to increase the return water temperature in the district heating network from 55°C to 80°C with the help of a 10 MW heat pump facility, one of the largest in Denmark. The eco-industrial park is the first full realisation of industrial symbiosis created through private initiatives.

Source: (Kalundborg Symbiosis, 2022).

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