Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Industrial heat production is responsible for around 20 % of total greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. To achieve the climate change goals defined in Paris Climate Agreement, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industry are urgently needed. Therefore, providing sustainable heat production for industrial applications would be considered as an essential solution. The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has further exposed EU for their dependency of natural gas in Russia. The EU commission has shifted their focus on sustainable means to generate heating in both residential and industrial applications. For fulfilling this target, focus and develop in novel technologies using renewable sources which could help to minimize CO2 emissions in their life cycle is inevitable.
Among few existing technologies, this report, focuses on two technologies which hold strong potential for heating decarbonization. High-temperature heat pumps (HTHP) which is a technology currently under development and already reached to cover up to 160 °C applications. It is projected that heat pumps would play bigger role with their higher rate of performance in future for industrial heat problem as they have potential to be totally carbon free technology, when they are hybridized with electricity from renewable sources. Solar thermal (ST) technology and specifically parabolic trough collector (PTC) which has a longer history of implementation in industrial energy systems and have obtained significant attention in ST heating systems for industrial applications. Solar thermal system can produce heat economically and at minimal carbon footprint compare to other technologies in the market.
The main aim of this thesis is based on implementing of mentioned technologies and evaluate their levelized cost of heat (LCOH) individually and consequently their capabilities in providing industrial heat loads. To be more precise, this thesis aims are to fulfil a comparative techno-economic analysis using PTC and HTHP. Boundary conditions for geographical constrains in Europe have been applied for setting up cases for further analysis. Then a sensitivity analysis by manipulating different parameters is made. It is important to mention that simulations for HTHP are performed using Excel spread sheet, while for ST part TRNSED and OCTAVE are used.
Results shows the cost of heat generation for both HTHP and PTC collectors with changing boundary conditions. A maximum solar fraction (SF) limit of PTC collector is defined to indicate when the LCOH for these two technologies coincides. The results can support decision-makers/designers to have a rough estimation of which SF would be viable under different boundaries such as: Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI) level, Capital expenses (CAPEX) of HTHP, load profile, and electricity price.
The results from the work can be used as a stepping stone to bring collaboration between two technologies thus working as hybrid system to provide nearly renewable heating systems for industries.
2022.