By Jan Spriet
The demonstrator at the ABP meat processing plant in Cahir, co. Tipperary, Ireland aims at showing and studying the potential heat recovery from highly loaded wastewater. This wastewater is available in large volumes at the factory’s own wastewater treatment plant. In the case of this demonstration rig, part of the wastewater is pumped through the heat recovery system.
The heat recovered through through 1 single (of 6) heat exchanger stands at 30kWh after one night. The total direct heat recovery system (all 7 pipes), would thus reduce the Carbon emissions by almost 36 kg Carbon equivalent per operating night.
The wastewater source heat pump produced around 65 kWh, with a COP of 3.25, on this operating night, delivering water with a flow rate of 2 l/min at 45°C, during the whole night (15 hours).
Additional tweaking of the settings will continue over the following weeks, before the system will be commissioned in its final form early 2020.