Waste heat recovery unit

Waste heat found in the exhaust gas of various processes or even from the exhaust stream of a conditioning unit can be used to preheat the incoming gas.

There are many different commercial recovery units for the transferring of energy from hot medium space to lower one:[1] A waste heat recovery boiler (WHRB) is different from a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) in the sense that the heated medium does not change phase.

According to a report done by Energetics Incorporated for the DOE in November 2004 titled Technology Roadmap[2] and several others done by the European Commission, the majority of energy production from conventional and renewable resources are lost to the atmosphere due to onsite (equipment inefficiency and losses due to waste heat) and offsite (cable and transformers losses) losses, that sums to be around 66% loss in electricity value.

[3] Waste heat of different degrees could be found in final products of a certain process or as a by-product in industry such as the slag in steelmaking plants.

Units or devices that could recover the waste heat and transform it into electricity are called WHRUs or heat to power units: The recovery process will add to the efficiency of the process and thus decrease the costs of fuel and energy consumption needed for that process.

A regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO) is an example of a waste heat recovery unit that utilizes a regenerative process.
Gateway Generating Station , a combined-cycle gas-fired power station in California, is equipped with two heat recovery steam generators on its combustion turbines.