REWARDHeat

Renewable and Waste Heat Recovery for Competitive District

It is in urban areas that the demand for heating and cooling demand assumes highest density. At the same time a huge amount of low-grade waste heat is diffused within the urban texture, the largest amount being rejected by air-conditioners, cooling systems in industrial processes and tertiary buildings (i.e. dry coolers and wet cooling towers), datacentres’ chillers and supermarkets’ refrigeration systems. Moreover, for historic reasons, cities have born along rivers, lakes and seashores. All these sources make low-temperature renewable energy available, which utilisation is highly replicable because it is accessible right where it is needed. Having this in mind, the overall objective of REWARDHeat is to demonstrate a new generation of low-temperature district heating and cooling networks, which will be able to recover low-grade renewable and waste heat available at low temperature. Focusing on the exploitation of the energy sources available within the urban context allows to maximize the replicability potential of the decentralized solutions developed in the project.

Project duration: 01 October 2019 - 30 September 2024