Today, global industry consumes a vast amount of energy. The biggest challenge is that as much as half of it is wasted due to the inefficient and complicated recovery of low-grade energy. Heat in the form of vapour, hot water, or hot air is a result of almost any production cycle, but it does not have to go to waste. With smarter systems, it can be recovered and reused for other purposes, contributing to the reduction of carbon emissions and to significant cost savings for both producers and end users.

The primary heat recovery solution in industry to date has been gasketed heat exchangers. It is widely known that these require a lot of space and regular maintenance, and have high lifecycle costs. Brazed plate heat exchangers (BPHEs), however, offer the same power but are substantially more compact and are virtually maintenance-free, reducing their lifecycle costs, according to SWEP, one of the world’s leading supplier of compact BPHEs.

A brazed plate heat exchanger consists of corrugated plates, combined to create complex channels through which a hot medium and a cold medium can be distributed.

The media flow in separate circuits but come into close proximity, allowing heat to be transferred from one to the other with very high efficiency. The number, type, and configuration of the plates can be varied to achieve the required thermal properties.

SWEP BPHEs offer the most efficient recovery of heat across a range of industrial applications, including co-gen and gen-set, chillers, organic Rankine cycle (ORC), the process industry, and air compressors.

In many cases, the reduction in wasted energy combined with lowered utility costs optimises the payback period. This can be as short as six months, the company said.