Techno-economic feasibility of high-temperature high-lift chemical heat pumps for upgrading industrial waste heat S. Spoelstra * , W.G. Haije, J.W. Dijkstra Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands, P.O. Box 1, 1755 ZG Petten, The Netherlands Received 13 February 2002; accepted 15 June 2002 Abstract This paper presents the results of a techno-economic feasibility study on two high-temperature high-lift chemicalheatpumpsforupgradingindustrialwasteheat.Thestudywassetupinordertoselectthemost promising heat pump concept for further development. First, a market study is performed to assess the amount of waste heat and the temperature dependence thereof. Based on the market potential, two heat pumpconceptsareselectedforfurtherdetailedevaluation.Theseareanisopropanolheatpumpandasalt/ ammonia vapour heat pump. Both heat pump concepts are technically able to upgrade the waste heat to usable temperature levels. However, the salt/ammonia vapour heat pump has a much better technical performance. In addition, the economic analysis shows that this heat pump has a far better economic feasibility with a mean internal rate of return of 14%. Therefore, this heat pump is selected for further development. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Industrial waste heat; Chemical heat pump; Isopropanol; Solid sorption; Feasibility study 1. Introduction Inthe1990s,thegovernmentpolicyintheNetherlandswithrespecttoenergysavinghasbeen formulated with the objective of achieving an improvement of 33% in energy efficiency in the Applied Thermal Engineering 22 (2002) 1619–1630 www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng * Corresponding author. Tel.: +31-224-564523; fax: +31-224-568615. E-mail address: spoelstra@ecn.nl (S. Spoelstra). 1359-4311/02/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S1359-4311(02)00077-7