A New Technique for Improved Use of Thermal Energy from Waste Effluents

Abstract

[Abstract] Energy sustainability and environmental protection in general are at the heart of engineering and industry discussions. Countless efforts have been devoted to improving the energy efficiency of industrial processes and specifically to harnessing their waste energy sources. One such source is waste from agro-industrial processes, which is frequently characterized by increased temperatures and high polluting potential. There are multiple available choices for exploiting energy from such waste, but this paper proposes a new alternative technique that substantially improves the efficiency. Based on the technology of leveraging a hot liquid effluent for heating a process fluid, this system introduces a third liquid to be revalorized by drying that is placed in between the hot and cold liquids. By adding stirrers inside the heat exchanger, the thermal resistance of the third fluid is reduced to a negligible level. Thus, this system has almost the same advantages as the previous one, but with the added benefit that it allows drying of a third fluid. One of the specific applications of this proposed technology is using heat from waste effluents to obtain dried food products. In the present work, it was used to dry slaughterhouse blood to obtain so-called “blood meal”, a product with a high added value that is used as pet food or organic fertilizer, and also has many other industrial applications. As shown here, the new technique outperforms existing alternatives in terms of energy efficiency and economic profitability.