At the Cuneo site of a major tire industry, two custom heat pumps of 250 kWt each have been installed to recover the 35°C thermal waste developed from the thermal emissions of a compressor station and produce process hot water at 86°C. This solution avoids the disposal of heat produced by the compressors into the air and reduces the amount of heat purchased from an external supplier and consequently reduces its CO2 emissions. This solution can be considered an example of best practice because it employs innovative technology that enables multiple goals to be achieved simultaneously:
(i) economic savings
(ii) Reduction of wastage of water, energy and primary energy
(iii) emission reduction, in an energy-intensive industrial environment. This solution is replicable in all those industrial settings with similar conditions (e.g., availability of thermal waste and need for hot water to be used either for process needs or for heating or domestic hot water (DHW).
