EINSTEIN II – Expert system for An INtelligent Supply of Thermal Energy in INdustry and other large scale applications

 

The specific objectives of the proposed project are as follows:

• provide a user-friendly thermal energy audit tool-kit that allows for fast, low-cost and high-quality thermal energy audits.
• realise an intensive training programme with relevant actors (including energy experts, energy auditors, energy managers in industrial and services sectors etc.) in the both larger European countries (UK, France, Germany) and other small EU countries;
• test and validate the improved and consolidated methodology in an audit campaign in the participating countries.
• development of standards, contribution to ongoing standardisation activities, identification of need for further standards.

Industrial thermal energy (heat and cold) demand constitutes about 28 % of the total final energy demand and produces about 21 % of the CO2 emissions in Europe. Space heating and cooling in buildings contributes another 27 % to the final energy demand. Despite improvements in energy efficiency across Europe over the last decades, there remains a large unexploited potential for reducing energy demand.

The proposed project aims to contribute to a widespread implementation of integrated energy-efficient solutions for thermal energy supply in industrial companies with a high fraction of low and medium temperature heat demand and for non-industrial users of similar demand profiles, such as hospitals, commercial centres, large office buildings, district heating and cooling networks, etc. To further optimise thermal energy supply, a holistic integral approach is required that includes the possibilities of demand reduction by heat recovery and process integration, and by an intelligent combination of existing affordable heat (and cold) supply technologies, under the given economic constraints.

The proposed project builds on the EINSTEIN tool kit for thermal energy auditing that has been developed within the previous IEE project EINSTEIN (Project EIE/07/210/SI2.446708). This tool kit, based on an expert system software tool, guides the user through the whole procedure from auditing (preparation of visit and data acquisition), to data processing, to the elaboration, design and quantitative (energetic and economic) evaluation of alternative solutions.

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