According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the industrial sector accounts for approximately one third of all energy used in the United States, consuming approximately 32 quadrillion Btu of energy annually and, as a result, emitting about 1,680 million metric tons of carbon dioxide – about one-third of fossil fuel related greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. It is estimated that somewhere between 20 to 50% of industrial energy input is lost as waste heat in the form of hot exhaust gases, cooling water, and heat lost from hot equipment surfaces and heated products.

 Captured and reused waste heat is an emission free substitute for costly purchased fuels or electricity. However, currently only a small portion of this wasted heat is being converted to usable power – an estimated 13 quadrillion Btu/yr of waste heat energy remains unrecovered as a consequence of industrial manufacturing. If a quarter of this heat could be effectively captured with Cyclone WHE systems, it would be enough to power 20+ million homes.

 One of the primary reasons for the vast amount of unused waste heat is that the economies of scale required to utilize current waste to power technologies – typically massive steam or Organic Rankine cycle (ORC) turbines – are too large for many heat producing sources. Thus, waste heat recovery is both technologically and economically impractical. Cyclone’s WHE systems are meant to address these concerns of system scaling, allowing a major, underserved market of industrial heat producers to put to work their wasted heat.

The market which Cyclone’s WHE systems could serve, and the impact that such installations could have, are enormous. For instance: