Waste Heat Recovery Unit - Advantages and Disadvantages of Waste Heat Recovery

Advantages and Disadvantages of Waste Heat Recovery

Advantages:

These systems have many benefits which could be direct or indirect.

• Direct benefits: The recovery process will add to the efficiency of the process and thus decrease the costs of fuel and energy consumption needed for that process.
• Indirect benefits:

1. Reduction in Pollution: Thermal and air pollution will dramatically decrease since less flue gases of high temperature are emitted from the plant since most of the energy is recycled.
2. Reduction in the equipment sizes: As Fuel consumption reduces so the control and security equipment for handling the fuel decreases. Also, filtering equipment for the gas is no longer needed in large sizes.
3. Reduction in auxiliary energy consumption: Reduction in equipment sizes means another reduction in the energy fed to those systems like pumps, filters, fans,...etc.

Disadvantages:

• Capital cost: The capital cost to implement a waste heat recovery system may outweigh the benefit gained in heat recovered. It is necessary to put a cost to the heat being offset.
• Quality of heat: Often waste heat is of low quality (temperature). It can be difficult to efficiently utilize the quantity of low quality heat contained in a waste heat medium. Heat exchangers tend to be larger to recover significant quantities which increases capital cost.