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Keeping face-to-face during COVID
By Aristotelis Botzios-Valaskakis , Senior Engineer at CRES
What a difference a year makes . Back in September 2019 we and colleagues from around Europe formally started the EUfunded EMB3Rs project , which is developing a platform to allow excess industrial heat and cold sources to find ways to reuse their excess thermal energy . This involves working on a case study in Greece , whereby an industrial park can use a heat exchanger and district heating system to provide excess heat to a nearby town . We want to see just how well the EMB3Rs platform can model such a setup . questions about energy efficiency and types of equipment can be a tough thing to prioritise .
If you ’ ll forgive the pun , the early reception to our questionnaire was lukewarm . There were some replies , but we needed some extra detail to get a full idea of what could be possible . Usually we can rely on getting this detail by visiting people face-to-face , though at this point it was early 2020 and like the rest of the world , the COVID-19 lockdowns hit Greece hard . We had to rely on teleconferencing for our survey follow-ups . While they served their purpose , I feel people naturally provide more detail from personal visits .
But first we needed to find the right business park . We settled on the Volos Industrial Park , around 160 Kilometres from Athens , where we ’ re based . It was an ideal mix for us . There are about 50 businesses at the park in industries such as cement , processed fish , and biomass generation . Also , around 5km away from the park is a small town with around 200 homes – they could easily benefit from the heating and hot water that can be created from district heating . We asked around and around 20 % of the businesses in the park agreed to take part in our research .
We first sent surveys asking about their operations on a daily , weekly , and yearly basis . That said , I must admit that we are not the highest priority for these types of businesses . In Greece , a large proportion of our industries are small-to-mid sized businesses . Many of these are run by manufacturing engineers who are already stretched thin by all their responsibilities . To then reply to in-depth
That said , we had a good relationship with people at the industrial park and we got detailed data about which industries were producing excess heat and which could act as heat-sinks – consuming another industry ’ s excess heat . All this data helped to refine simulations on the EMB3Rs platform . Now , three years on , a near-final version of the platform has identified four sources of wasteheat in the industrial area . Their rejected heat is computed to be around 14 million kilowatt hours per year - this could potentially heat the homes of a village of 7000 people .
As the project wraps up , the important thing for us to remember is just how useful faceto-face meetings are for both researchers and those working in industry . As we have exited lockdown and returned to having face-to-face meetings again , people at Volos Park are now united in a common goal . That creates other synergies that can benefit companies and locals alike .
About the Centre
The Centre for Renewable Energy Sources and Saving ( CRES ) is the Greek national entity for the promotion of renewable energy sources , rational use of energy and energy conservation . CRES implements innovative projects and significant activities for the promotion and market penetration of new energy technologies . www . heat-exchanger-world . com