Project Leader: Professor Adisa Azapagic
Project Duration: September 2017 - August 2021.
The main aim of the project is to help reduce the energy consumption of the process industries by 30%-50%, with the corresponding reduction in GHG emissions and other environmental impacts, through the development of distributed heat and power generation. Application of the concept requires the creation of networks of energy hubs. This differs from the conventional approach to centralised onsite energy generation to allow a particular process site to be serviced by more than one energy hub, each potentially with different energy sources and equipment, with anyone hub in principle servicing different processing sites and companies. Implementation of such solutions requires the development of a decision-support framework capable of design and optimisation of networks of energy hubs that are economically, environmentally and socially more sustainable than current systems on a life cycle basis. The energy hubs need to exploit an appropriate combination of different energy sources, including renewables, waste-to-energy systems, the symbiotic exploitation of waste heat and energy storage. The network of energy hubs will be designed to match local power-to-heat ratio demand and heating requirements, both in terms of duty and temperature in a more efficient and sustainable way than current approaches.
The primary contact for this project is Dr Julia Jimenez Romero.
All group members involved in this project: