Source: Financieel Dagblad, April 10 2014, The new investers are the Dutch Greentech Fund and the ‘Innovatie- en Investeringsfonds Gelderland’.
The future of technology supplier HeatMatrix looks very bright. The small enterprise, that recently succesfully completed an ISPT-NL GUTS technology demonstration project, has attracted 2,4M of new investments. Dutch newspapers refer to the company as the ‘green’ export promise from Rotterdam. The new capital should especially boost the company’s growth in Germany.
HeatMatrix has developed a system that can bring down the energy costs of industrial companies. The system consists of a large amount of narrow plastic tubes, that are placed vertically into the bottom of the chimneys of factories. The one meter tubes recover the heat from the flue gas of the factory and then reuse this heat, by returning it to the boilers to start a new process. The system can potentially lead to an annual 4 percent reduction of heating costs.
In the ISPT-NL GUTS project ‘Waste heat recovery from corrosive flue gas‘, HeatMatrix tested their technology at the VION Ingredients site Burgum, where corrosive flue gas was used to preheat cold combustion air with a polymer heat exchanger. This innovative air preheater showed stable performance during the 6 months demonstration period while operated with flue gas containing acidic components and fouling particles.
The results from this recent ISPT-NL GUTS technoproject confirm that waste heat from flue gasses is an attractive source of ‘hidden’ energy that is ready to be unlocked in a reliable way. “Recovery of this waste heat is the best investment in sustainability since it combines fuel cost savings with a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions”, says Bart van den Berg from HeatMatrix Group BV.
