GEA has installed a new high-temperature heat pump at the Belgian sugar producer Tiense Suiker, a company of the German Südzucker Group.
The new GEA technology enables industrial waste heat to be brought to temperatures of 135 to 160 °C utilising natural refrigerants.
Until now, industrial heat pumps with a medium output (500 kW to 10 MW) have mainly been limited to flow temperatures of around 95 °C.
With the new high-temperature heat pump, GEA is making an important contribution to the decarbonisation of the sugar production process at Tiense Suiker.
The new high-temperature heat pump from GEA ensures an annual reduction in CO₂ emissions of 3,000 to 3,500 tonnes per year.
Tiense Suiker's long-term goal is to completely decarbonise the sugar refinery process.
The first step towards achieving this goal was to participate in the SPIRIT project which promotes the use of industrial heat pumps throughout Europe to meet climate targets.
The next step was to integrate a GEA high-temperature heat pump into the heart of the production process. The integrated technology is a steam generation with pentane as a natural refrigerant and a screw compressor.
This technology uses vacuum steam with a temperature between 75 °C and 92 °C from the evaporation plant as a heat source to generate steam with a temperature of around 139 °C and an output of 4 MW.
The official opening of the plant last week was attended by Flemish Prime Minister Matthias Diependaele, Südzucker Group COO, Hans-Peter Gai and CEO of GEA Heating & Refrigeration Technologies Kai Becker.