Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Electrical-Gold1224 t1_j1x2x2e wrote

Aside from what everyone else has said, I had a college professor who had a great side business designing chemical plant "heat reclamation" systems where heat would be taken from exothermic reactions and joined in system with endothermic reactions occurring in other parts of the plant, thus eliminating waste from separate heaters and coolers.

6

xombie25 OP t1_j1x4x5v wrote

Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!

3

JolietJakester t1_j1xf7k6 wrote

In the business, we call them "Economizers". Often times our waste streams are needlessly hot and our input streams are too cold, so we'll have the 2 trade some heat to reduce out outlet cooling + inlet heating needs.

People have started doing the same thing with home water lines actually' pre-heat the cold water going to your water heater by taking heat from the shower drain essentially.

Also Town of Holland, MI uses waste heat for heated sidewalks in the winter.

Lots of ways to re-use heat if you look hard enough.
Source: 12 yr Chemical Engineer

3