Product

HEAT RECYCLING FOR INDUSTRY

Recover energy, protect the environment and save costs

TECHNOLOGY

Conventional heat pumps physically use the two-phase Rankine process. The superior Joule process or Brayton process has many advantages over this, e.g. in that it is single-phase (the working fluid always remains gaseous). However, the practical implementation was not considered feasible, as this process requires extremely high efficiency in compression. ecop has succeeded in achieving this efficiency of over 99% by having the entire process use centrifugal force and rotate – hence “Rotation Heat Pump”. The technology is protected by 68 patents from 6 patent families.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

The ROTATION HEAT PUMP uses mostly previously unused waste heat that is normally released into the environment. This eliminates the need to use fossil fuels. Each system saves up to 2,500 tons of CO2 per year compared to producing the same energy with gas. A tree can absorb 25 kg of CO2 per year. This means that it would take 100,000 trees to absorb the amount saved by a single plant. Over the next 10 years, we would like to help save several million tons of CO2. The heat pump itself uses an environmentally friendly and non-toxic working fluid instead of a refrigerant.

BENEFITS

For our customers – industrial companies and manufacturers of heat – the unique design results in a number of benefits:

  • Production of heat sustainably and without dependence on fossil fuels
  • Contribution to climate targets and decarbonisation
  • Efficient use of waste heat
  • Saving costs

Advantages

Due to its special design, the Rotation Heat Pump has a number of advantages over other technologies, which makes it highly attractive:

High temperature
Output up to 200°C

Flexible
Different operating points without changes to the hardware

Large temperature range
Up to 100 Kelvin within one process

Highly efficient
Superior technology enables up to 100% higher efficiency
Source cooling
The source can be cooled significantly
Environmentally friendly
100% Green High Tech: non-toxic, non-flammable working fluid with zero Global Warming Potential (GWP)
Conventional heat pump Rotation Heat Pump
Efficiency / COP (dependent on the exact integration) 2,5 – 5,0 4,0 – 7,0
Temperature range, sink (output) 0°C to +80°C 0°C to +200°C
Maximum temperature rise 60K 100K
Flexible temperature range with one machine no yes
Significant source cooling possible no yes
Summer and winter operation no yes
Tools Often harmful to the environment / toxic / flammable environmentally friendly, non-toxic, incombustible inert gas
Maintenance advantage medium high
Installation advantage low high
Purchase costs and integration effort medium medium

 

Implementation

The ecop process is a thermodynamic cycle process.

Instead of the Carnot process in the 2-phase range, the innovative heat pump technology is based on a left-hand Joule process in which there is no phase transition of the working medium. It always remains gaseous. Although this process is already about 150 years old, it could not be used in heat pumps until now because of the high compression required. ecop achieves this by centrifugal force. The working gas of the Rotation Heat Pump circulates in a closed circuit rotating around an axis. If heat exchangers are now positioned close to and further away from the axis of rotation and these are connected to pipes, a thermodynamic cycle is built up. Since the centrifugal force during rotation increases with increasing distance from the axis of rotation, the working gas is also increasingly compressed by the centrifugal force. To operate the cycle, the working gas must circulate in a closed circuit by means of a fan. The increase in pressure in the area far from the axis causes an increase in the temperature of the working gas, which releases heat into a sink via a heat exchanger. When the cooled gas is expanded again, it changes its temperature to a lower level due to the flow against the centrifugal force and can thus absorb heat again at the source via the heat exchanger near the axle. The rotor is manufactured using the “diffusion bonding” process. Around 300,000 channels are located inside an integrated block in which the entire heat pump process takes place.

James Prescott Joule, Source Wikipedia

Variation of rotation speed for maximum efficiency.

Depending on the speed of rotation, there is a different pressure ratio between the outer and inner zone. That way, the compression and expansion pressure ratio can be changed. This results in a freely definable temperature difference between the low-pressure side (source) and high-pressure side (sink), which can be regulated via the rotational speed. Through the rotational speed of the fan, the flow rate and hence the transferrable heating capacity are regulated independently of the temperature increase. Hence, this technology facilitates maximum flexibility.

Modular rotor design: Optimum performance scaling

By combining several modules, the performance of the Rotation Heat Pump can be multiplied. With the help of diffusion bonding technology, rotor modules (so-called “cores”) with an output of 700 kW are created. However, around 50% of the requirements for industrial heat pumps are in the range up to 10 MW. Other suppliers address this by building larger systems. These need more space, are difficult to transport and implement and entail more risk in the event of a failure.

ecop’s technology allows several of the cores to be combined instead. For example, 8 cores can be combined in one machine. This increases the output to 5.6 MW. This leads to economies of scale in production and numerous benefits for our customers: Simple adjustment of the output, fast change of assembly groups, very good part load behaviour, a very small size, and quick set-up at customer site.

Articles

Archive