Modular thermoelectric system for industrial waste HEAT Recovery (HEAT-R)

ended

Waste Heat (WH) emissions are a major economic and environmental issue, and the European legislation is increasingly pushing industrial companies to look for new solutions to reduce them. In this sense, Energy Harvesting (EH) techniques are one of the most promising sources of solutions, with a potential market of $250 million in the next 3 years. However, currently available EH solutions have important limitations mainly due to their low adaptability to different industrial settings and their high maintenance costs. HEAT-R proposes a new solution allowing the direct conversion of WH into electricity. It is a modular unit using multiple ThermoElectrical Generation cells associated and controlled through a programmable control unit based on System-on Chip technology, overcoming actual limitations by providing: • a large power generation capacity • a low-cost packaged solution • an adaptable and fully scalable system • a reliable, easy-to-install and maintenance-free product Current prototypes have been validated in relevant environments and one of the main objectives is now to scale up and adapt them to specific industrial requirements. In this sense, a demonstration within the premises of the first early adopter customer (SEAT-Volkswagen) will be performed during next months. The main objectives of HEAT-R are to validate the feasibility of the following technical, economic and impact aspects of the project: - Manufacturing process definition, including a Quality & Certification plan - New key partners identification - Industrial prototype validation - Know-how protection plan development - New customers’ requirements and needs identification (installation, validation, maintenance ...) - Market study improvement, including a deeper competitor analysis - Commercialization plan implementation (national and international strategies) - Target annual profit forecast validation (1.459.940€ in 2018) - Target direct qualified job generation (23 positions)