(July 27, 2015) As
part of the National Research Program “Energy Turnaround” NRP 70 the Swiss
National Science Foundation (SNSF) is supporting the interdisciplinary research
project “THRIVE”. With IBM Research – Zurich and the Hochschule für Technik
Rapperswil as leading houses, scientists from Empa, ETH Zurich, HEIG-VD and PSI
will be teaming up with industrial partners until 2017 to develop a heat pump
that is powered by waste heat.
Compared to today’s compression heat pumps, this technology
only requires very little electricity and can also use waste heat efficiently
to air-condition buildings. The project is part of the SNSF initiative to
support the Swiss government’s “Energy Strategy 2050” and is open to further
industrial partners interested in collaborating.
According to a study commissioned by the Swiss Federal
Office of Energy (SFOE), heat production accounts for around half of
Switzerland’s entire energy consumption, such as for heating or numerous
technical procedures, including drying, forging or melting. Today, the energy
demand is primarily covered by fossil energy sources and the waste heat
produced in the process is usually released unused into the surroundings.
Almost 40% of the total electricity consumption still goes on heating and
cooling. The Energy Strategy 2050 plans to phase out nuclear power, which
provides 40% of Switzerland’s electricity today, and to drastically reduce CO2
emissions – a goal that urgently requires the more efficient use of the
available energy resources and a sustainable reduction in the electricity
consumption.