High-Temperature Heat Pumps : Task 1 – Technologies. Annex 58 about High-Temperature Heat Pump

Industries are using a considerable share of their final energy consumption on process heating, which is often based on fossil fuels and accordingly accounting for a large share of their greenhouse gas emissions. Decarbonizing the process heating by electrification and energy efficiency is a top priority for industries with respect to reaching their climate ambitions towards 2030 and beyond. Industrial heat pumps can provide industrial process heating, based on potentially emission free electricity and at highest efficiencies, which is making them a key technology for decarbonizing industrial process heating. For heat supply temperatures below 100 °C, they are already a well proven technology and being implemented in industries. With fuel prices and carbon taxes that are becoming more beneficial for industrial heat pumps, their range of application as the preferred technology is emerging to temperatures well above 100 °C. For the large share of process heat requirements above 100 °C, there is currently a limited number of technologies available, while various technologies are under development. Enabling a large variety of industries to convert their process heat supply to high-temperature heat pumps with supply temperatures above 100 °C requires a common understanding of the technology, its potentials and its perspectives for a variety of stakeholders. This report aims at supporting the overall development of high-temperature heat pumps by providing an overview of the current state of the art and future perspectives towards 2030 on a global level. The first section provides an overview of the terminology and the basic working principles of high-temperature heat pumps. Subsequently, an overview of high-temperature heat pump technologies with supply temperatures above 100 °C is presented, considering market ready technologies as well as technologies under development. The comprehensive overview is based on a systematic description of 34 technologies, including information about the technology such as the general layout, the development status and perspectives, expected performances for various application examples, compressor type, working fluid, capacity and temperature range, investment cost, footprint and weight. The reviewed solutions covered technologies with a technology readiness level between 4 to 9, specific investment cost between 200 €/kW to 1500 €/kW, capacities between 30 kW to 70 MW and maximum supply temperature between 100 °C and 280 °C. It must be noted that the development status for a given temperature and capacity is not only depending on the technology readiness level, but also on achievable efficiencies, the cost of the technology and the geographical availability of a sales, service and maintenance network. The review of supplier technologies has been complemented with a review of realized demonstration cases and 18 realized HTHP applications could be realized and systematically described. Each demonstration case description included information about the sector, application, process integration, technology type and manufacturer, operating experiences and more. The identified demonstrations were installed in various sectors, including food and beverage, refinery, electronics, chemicals and were mainly based on closed vapor compression cycles, steam compression and heat transformers. Finally, an overview is given of the HTHP industries, the markets and application potentials, the development perspectives of the technologies and selected R&D projects. The overview is given on a national basis for 13 countries, before the main development perspectives are condensed into a holistic overview of the global development perspectives of HTHPs. The national reviews indicate a generally large technical application potential, with different market potentials and motivations on a national and local level. For the European market, both electrification and energy efficiency are driving factors, while energy efficiency is the dominating factor for markets such as North America. Europe and Japan are the forerunners with respect to technology development, with well-established industries for industrial heat pumps, which is being extended to high-temperature heat pumps. From the overall review, it can be concluded that there are some solutions which are already commercially offered and implemented, but also that there is still a considerable effort needed to develop and demonstrate the required variety of solutions at the scale needed for reaching the required implementation targets for decarbonizing industries. For the coming years, there will be a strong focus on bringing technologies into application, demonstrating them in industrial applications and establishing supply chains as well as increasing the variety of solutions and extending the range of applications. In parallel, industrial end-users will work on optimizing their production to be able to convert to heat pump-based process heat supply. It is expected that various high-temperature heat pump technologies will become commercially available and implemented during 2024 to 2025 for supply at up to 120 °C, during 2025 to 2026 for temperatures up to 160 °C, and during 2026 to 2027 for even higher temperatures. This development is however strongly driven by innovative technology development initiatives, first movers among industrial end-users as well as the regulatory frameworks and economic boundary conditions. Changing any of these factors has the potential to accelerate the development even more, and thereby the transition towards decarbonized industrial process heating.Annex 58 about High-Temperature Heat Pumps is coordinated by the Operating Agent: Danish Technological Institute, Energy and Climate. The Annex is being operated from 01/2020 to 12/2023. The main information can be found at the Annex 58 homepage: https://heatpumpingtechnologies.org/annex58/