Adecision support systemfor industrial waste heat recovery: the CE-HEAT Project

The exploitation of the huge potential for industrial waste heat recovery detected in Europe represents an opportunity to accomplish the objectives set by the European Union with the aim to reduce resources consumption, greenhouse gases emissions and to fightclimate change. The CE-HEAT project, financed by the Interreg Central Europe Programme, aims to improve the governance of energy efficiency by focusing on the field of waste heat utilization in Central Europe space. In order to aid the decision-making process of investors and policy makers, an online decision support tool for the preliminary assessment of investments in waste heat recovery projects has been implemented. Different operating scenarios could be compared combining various heat recovery technologies, some of which considering single companies (absorption chiller, heat exchanger, heat pump) and others network oriented (district heating, ORC). The operation of the online tool is based on a multi-objective decision support system (DSS) which hasbeen specifically developed. The objective functions evaluate environmental impact minimization and economic performances maximization, ensuring a sustainability analysis. In order to evaluate the main parameters that interest the stakeholders, decision variables such as incentives, grant, thermal and electrical energy costs have been considered. The developed DSS is aimed at helping final users in the decision-making process through a conscious comparison between different waste heat recovery options based on the exploitation of different technologies. Once the input variables are selected by the user, the program will provide the decision support suggestions in terms of sustainability performance indicators, displayed by graphs and tables, allowing a comparison of these options