Solar heat is already used for Agro-Food industrial processes, mainly under 120°C. The FRIENDSHIP project will aim to demonstrate that solar heat can also be a reliable, user-friendly, high quality and cost-effective resource to meet the heat requirements for other industrial sectors as Textile, Plastics, Wood, Metal and Chemistry. To this end, the project plans to bring together research centres, industry leaders, technologies & heat suppliers into the same consortium in order to unite skills towards the boost and control of the heat supply temperature according to processes needs.Different coupling of technological and control innovations will be investigated: optimization of heat transfer coefficients; coupling and reliability of different solar technologies; introduction of high-temperature heat pumps; combined heat storage bringing flexibility on both solar and process loops with guarantees of continuous operation as well as plug-and-play integration; thermal chillers for cooling demand; and smart control to ease operation of the overall installation according to the process specifications. The proposed systems will be able to supply together heat at temperature up to 300°C and negative cold at temperature down to -40°C. In order to guarantee the replicability and scalability of the proposed demonstration, specific work will be carried out with world-class industries involved in the consortium (regulatory studies, financial incentive schemes, local energy markets creation), especially turned towards relevant users cases: industrial sites and parks in European countries where solar heat is currently underused.Ultimately, the project will evaluate to what extent high share of solar heat heating and cooling will allow to reduce the dependence of industrial processes on carbon energies and associated polluting emissions, and to quantify economic gains related to the use of solar energy in a context of a changing fossil fuel market and changing climatic constraints.

This project aims to develop and validate (in the relevant environment to reach TRL 5) a novel thermochemically operating technology that can very efficiently, safely, cost-effectively, and sustainably provide waste heat recovery of industrial processes and upgrade them to much higher temperature levels (the target temperature will be 150-250 deg. C, here). The technology is a novel yet outstanding generation of heat transformers (Hydration Heat Transformer), outperforming any other competing technologies including various designs of high-temperature vapor compression heat pumps due to several reasons. That is, TechUPGRADE's solution i) may simply be integrated with any renewable technologies including solar thermal systems, ii) consumes almost no electricity, and presents significantly high energy and exergy efficiencies, iii) can be much more cost-effective than competing technologies due to expected long useful lifespan, the simplicity of the design and operation mechanism, and the way it integrates low-value heat sources, iv) may be employed for a variety of integration possibilities, low-temperature heat sources, and various heat sink temperature levels, and also, v) with simple adjustment, can offer the storage of the recovered waste or renewable heat if there is a mismatch between the heat source availability and the process heating demand. The project consortium consists of 14 partners from the four corners of the EU; including 5 universities, 3 research centers, 4 SMEs, 1 large company, and 1 partner with several industrial end-users, making sure that all the required expertise for a successful accomplishment of the project and future exploitation exist, and also the partners supplement each other in the most optimal manner. The technology will be demonstrated in different specific designs and integrations in two relevant environments in Sweden and Germany in 35 kW and 10 kW high-temperature heat delivery capacities.

INDHEAP project will demonstrate at TRL7 that it is worth considering solar thermal (ST) and photovoltaic (PV) energies in combination to address the heat and power needs of mid temperature industrial processes, up to 250°C. As for it, INDHEAP will highlight the synergy between the different technologies with the development and integration of a core flexible Thermal Energy Storage, boosted by electric heaters (named e-TES) that is the key for a rational use of thermal and electrical solar renewable energy. The project will rely on the development of specific methodology and tools, tested on different case studies from industrial project’s partners, as to : 1) reduce heat and power peak demands with an optimization of the current energy efficiency for the industrial process, (best use of waste heat and analyse of demand’s elasticity) 2) define the best share between ST and PV based on technical-eco-environmental criteria 3) define the ST-PV hybrid system’s architecture, the presizing of components, and the global control maximizing the use of solar heat and power. 4) develop the specific components for the best integration and use of ST and PV plants in synergy, e.g. the flexible e-TES, but also PV panels integration enablers, low cost / mid temperature solar collectors and a smart hybrid controller for heat and power joined management. A prototype (ST up to 300 kWth, PV up to 20 kWp, e-TES up to 1 MWh) will be installed on an industrial process of lubricants blending, owned by Total Energies in Spain, to validate the concept at TRL7 with a one year test campaign. The replicability of the demo is hundreds of equivalent sites. Finally, from results gained, a global upscaling and replication potential across the South Europe and MENA areas will be achieved to assess the societal and economic benefits of the concept to meet the Net Zero by 2050 ambitions. INDHEAP will support the EU in reducing dependency to natural gas, while reaching climate targets

Today, the heating sector is not on track toward achieving the IEA Net-Zero targets: it represents more than a third of the energy demand and it mainly relies on fossil fuels. District heating is recognized as a major solution allowing decarbonization of the heating sector. The integration of large-scale seasonal energy storage, compensating for the mismatch between supply and demand whilst ensuring the service, is key for a wide spread of district heating. USES4HEAT aims to demonstrate innovative, large-scale, seasonal thermal energy storage solutions enabling a future decarbonized and reliable heating supply. USES4HEAT demonstrates, at TRL8 and for a one-year test campaign, two innovative, cost-effective, large-scale, seasonal underground TES units to maximize the availability and resilience of heating supply while reducing energy losses and environmental impact. USES4HEAT seeks to demonstrate the storages as fully integrated units in commercial large-scale district heating networks and industrial waste heat recovery and fulfilling industrial thermal demand. In doing so, USES4HEAT also demonstrates six innovative key enabling components/technologies and their integration with seasonal storages: advanced drilling equipment and remotely controlled machines halving drilling times, innovative layered high-temperature borehole pipes, efficient groundwater heat pumps integrated with aquifer storages, hybrid solar panels and thermal solar collector, and accurate AI-based energy management tools. USES4HEAT will systematically demonstrate the effectiveness and techno-economic-social viability of innovative, large-scale, seasonal energy storages ensuring limited CAPEX, reduced environmental impact and energy losses, efficient integration in district heating and accumulation of various sources of heat, and granting reliable and decarbonized heating supply.