Methodologies and software tools for integrating solar heat into industrial processes

This paper introduces Task 49 of the International Energy Agency (IEA) – Solar Heating and Cooling Programme (SHC) and its background. It describes process integration (namely Pinch Analysis) and its application to optimise the energy efficiency and CO2 emissions of industrial processes. This allows to efficiently scope and screen the various opportunities to improve the above issues: process modifications, intra- and inter-process heat recovery, integration of heat pumps and combined heat & power systems, and solar heat. A corresponding workflow is presented, ensuring that no opportunity is overlooked and that the integration of solar heat does not prevent other cost effective improvements to be implemented. Practical constraints and the complexity of heat supply in most industrial processes result in several suitable integration points for solar heat; hence a methodology is proposed to identify the most promising of these points. Further, the variability of solar heat over time and the necessity to optimally design and manage heat storage is another challenging issue. A review of existing software tools implementing Pinch Analysis reveals that few of them have features to address this issue; two suitable tools (PinCH and SOCO) are introduced, and gaps as well as future development needs are highlighted.