Open Access

Suleman Tariq

• This study has evaluated the heat loss potential and energy consumption at the industrial level. Notably, heat loss on a large scale at the industrial level has been recognized as neither economically nor environmentally sustainable. Moreover, the continued use of fossil fuels (natural gas) has been reviewed as unsustainable due to their adverse effect and limited availability, posing challenges for the present and future. Heat loss is optimized at the continental production site in Villingen-Schwenningen. Heat loss through exhaust fans, which extract heat from inside the building and release it to the environment to maintain the internal temperature, has been analysed. The released heat is lost in the environment. To recover this energy loss, the integration of a plate-to-plate heat exchanger is proposed. This approach recovers the rejected heat to preheat the incoming fresh air supply, replacing the traditional heat coil operated on natural gas. Additionally, the transition of natural gas to biogas has been explored. The district heating twin pipe (DN 80) is considered for the smooth flow of thermal energy. For this project, a financial analysis of return on investment (ROI) for 10 years is conducted, the thermal energy flow rate over 2.1km, and heat loss during the transfer phase are calculated. The results have shown significant importance for the recovered energy by integration of a plate-to-plate heat exchanger; yearly, 1.2 GW of energy can be recovered, reducing the consumption of natural gas and making a complete transition towards biogas, economically and environmentally beneficial.