About High-Temperature Heat Pumps

Objective

The overall objective of the Annex is to provide an overview of the technological possibilities and applications as well as to develop concepts and strategies for the transition towards heat pump-based process heat supply. The intention is to improve the understanding of the technology’s potential among various stakeholders, such as manufacturers, potential end-users, consultants, energy planners and policy makers. In addition, the Annex aims to provide supporting material to facilitate and enhance the transition to a heat pump-based process heat supply for industrial applications.

Background

The worldwide ambitions to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions require a considerable reduction of fossil-fuel based heat supply for industrial processes. In 2015 European process heating and cooling accounted for approximately 50 % of the final energy consumption of the industry. Electrically driven heat pumps are a promising technology for increasing system efficiencies and decreasing GHG emissions, using potentially emission free electricity.

However, the commercially available heat pumps are limited to supply temperatures below 100 °C, while the availability of systems capable of higher supply temperatures is limited. The European statistics shows that 67 % of the demand between 100 °C and 200 °C was directly covered by fossil fuels. From this, a considerable application potential for industrial heat pumps and the associated emission reductions can be derived for the range between 100 °C and 200 °C. High-temperature heat pumps are expected to have the most promising performance in terms of levelized cost of heat in a variety of applications. Extending the range of application to supply temperatures of up to 200 °C would allow high-temperature heat pumps to cover 37 % of the entire process heat demand of the European industry.