Climeon awarded for waste heat recovery for marine industry

Climeon AB was awarded with the 2015 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for Technology Innovation for its system to turn waste heat to electricity.

Climeon developed the futuristic C3 technology to capture waste heat streams, which would otherwise have been directed straight into the ocean. This technology converts low temperature heat to sustainable electricity to facilitate superior operating efficiency and smaller carbon footprint. The unit is capable of producing 690 volts or 220 volts output, depending on the need.

The C3 technology leverages the expertise of several Swedish universities. Climeon estimates that there are 30,000 ships in the global marine market that can benefit from the C3 technology, indicating significant opportunities. Other potential application areas are geothermal plants, steel plants, metal production, paper factories, solar heating, biomass combustion and coal-fired power generation. It can also be coupled with district heating networks, especially to compensate the seasonal effect.

“Climeon promotes a 150 kW model at present but has revealed its ambition to manufacture bigger models for steel factories,” noted Krishna Venkataramani. “It assembles these machines in a modular manner to produce units capable of handling bigger power ratings such as 300 kW or 600 kW. This saves engineering costs on designing new systems from the ground up, as larger systems can be difficult to retrofit into existing ships.”

The modular system increases the overall efficiency and versatility of the system. This novel technology has been successfully implemented aboard a ship called ‘Viking Grace’, which sails between Sweden and Finland. This ship has saved an estimated 200 tonnes of fuel and more than 400 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year from all the clean electricity it generates.