Felix Schoeller’s paper mill in Weißenborn, Germany, is a demonstration site for upgrading process waste heat with a vapour-compression heat pump using piston compressors, according to the Push2Heat project description. Push2Heat describes the Weißenborn site as a demonstration of a vapour-compression heat pump using piston compressors to upgrade process waste heat in papermaking.
Push2Heat says the mill currently makes steam in a central natural-gas boiler. Push2Heat says the paper machine uses nearly 130,000 MWh of steam a year, has the highest energy demand at the mill and uses most of the heat for drying. Push2Heat says the Weißenborn factory in Saxony produces around 100,000 tonnes of paper a year.
A separate TU Berlin project description says the university, BS Nova and Tecnalia are developing a heat transformer intended to raise paper-mill waste heat from 90°C to 140°C. It gives a target output of around 350 kW as water vapour fed back into production, and a thermal coefficient of performance of around 0.5. TU Berlin describes the 90 °C to 140 °C temperature range and thermal COP of around 0.5 as targets for a heat transformer it is developing with BS Nova and Tecnalia.
Push2Heat aims to remove technical, economic and regulatory barriers to waste-heat recovery. Fraunhofer IEG says the project plans to scale up four heat-pump technologies supplying temperatures between 90°C and 160°C, with implementation planned at four industrial sites. TU Berlin lists the project period as October 2022 to September 2026.
