Muhaimin Iqbal
Author

Waste Heat Technology, Literally Hot!

Advanced Renewable

Mon , 13 May 2024 21:18 WIB

One of the most creative jobs in the world is the work of scavengers, it is in their hands that everything that has been thrown away by its owner, everything that most people see as a burden or liability - can become a valuable asset again.

At the WastoE (Waste To Energy) studio managed by the Advanced Renewable Organization (ARO), the mindset of waste scavengers who are agile in turning liabilities into assets is realized in various forms of technological innovation. I have previously introduced, for example, ASP (Autothermal Slow Pyrolysis) technology which turns organic waste - which even real scavengers no longer take, back into an asset in the form of charcoal, a basic energy source that can become anything.

When we think about what charcoal is for?, the next technology was born, namely OCCYRE - Onboard Carbon Cycle for Regenerative Energy. The essence of OCCYRE is to use charcoal that has been activated and functionalized to capture CO2 emissions. The reaction between charcoal and CO2 will produce CO gas, which is the building block for all forms of energy we need.

But CO needs another companion, namely H2. Where can we get this H2? It can be directly from charcoal, or using CO gas for the Water Gas Shift (WGS) reaction to produce H2. Both produce low cost H2 and the energy consumption for the process is also low.

One weakness is that when we use some of the charcoal or CO gas to produce H2, automatically the C element which we actually also need for the synthesis of hydrocarbon fuels such as petrol and diesel, as well as oxygenates such as ethanol and methanol - decreases. Because the C is reduced, the final fuel produced is also reduced. How can we get H2 from other low cost sources without having to sacrifice charcoal or CO gas?

From this question, the third technology was born which we are introducing it as ORISYS from the Organic Rankine System, namely technology to capture waste or emissions which are abundant in industry and commercial and only very few have been used, namely waste heat.

ORISYS, which looks like in the picture below, functions to capture waste heat and convert it into electricity, the electricity can be used to electrolyze water into H2. Because the electricity source comes from waste heat that has been discarded, producing H2 in this way is also low cost, environmentally friendly, does not increase carbon emissions, and does not require sacrificing charcoal or CO.

What happens if these three technologies are combined? the combination of ASP, OCCYRE and ORISYS will enable us to process waste, CO2 emissions and waste heat as a whole and at the same time time become the fuel we need, in the form of gasoline, diesel, LPG, methanol, ethanol etc., with a high level of productivity, because all waste , emissions and waste heat are processed into products and nothing is sacrificed or ignored.