Markus Fritz studied environmental engineering at Technische Universität Darmstadt, where he completed his studies in 2018 with a master’s thesis on the effect of European CO2 fleet limit values on the market uptake of electric vehicles. Since July 2018 he has been working as a Researcher in the Competence Center Energy Technologies and Energy Systems of the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI. His research areas include energy efficiency potentials in industry and buildings, in particular, waste heat recovery, heat supply, the water-energy nexus and the analysis of instruments and measures to increase energy efficiency.

Abstract:

Industrial excess heat is often discussed as possible supply option for private households. However, if this heat is far away from district heating networks, then the construction of new infrastructure is capital intensive. This can lead to low economic efficiency. For this reason, the existing sewer network offers a solution with existing infrastructure. Here excess heat can be transferred to the wastewater with heat exchangers, which leads to a rising wastewater temperature. The energy quantity of the wastewater is then taken at another point along the flow direction of the sewer and used as heat source for a heat pump. The heat pump can then be operated more efficiently with the warmer wastewater and the excess heat is thus used. Our results demonstrate that transferring heat via the sewer network offers high theoretical potentials.