ETV Online Conference 2020

Large-Scale and High-Temperature Industrial Heat Pumps in the Energy System

The transformation of the energy system into a renewable energy economy is being more concretely developed as the degree of implementation increases. After initially building up significant capacities of renewable generation via wind energy and photovoltaics, general storage and, consequently, sector coupling were brought to the fore. In this context, the coupling of the electricity sector to transport and to the heating sector via electric heat pumps in the long term, is clear.

As a major industrial nation and heavy exporter, Germany also needs viable - i.e., large-scale, reliable, and cost-effective - solutions for energy supply in industry. This is the main focus of the hydrogen strategy. Heat pumps are attractive for heat supply in industry, provided they cover large capacities and make higher temperature levels available for process heat. These requirements go considerably beyond those of heat pumps for households.

For this reason, the Specialist Group for Energy Process Engineering within the German platform for process engineering, chemical engineering, and technical chemistry ProcessNet has taken up the question of what status heat pumps and high-temperature heat pumps have today and what potential they represent in the future in an online seminar.

Despite the short lead time for the online seminar, we succeeded in attracting four proven experts from industry and academia to give presentations. The decision to present online was strongly driven by the desire to continue operating as efficiently and normally as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We hope that this seminar has helped both to shed more light on the technical and content-related topics of large and high-temperature heat pumps and to make it known on a wider scale, as well as to show how knowledge can be conveyed online very efficiently and discussed effectively, even in difficult times