Multinational pharmaceutical company Takeda has installed a 1.2MW (341TR)-capacity high-temperature heat pump using butane (R600) and water (R178) at its manufacturing facility in Vienna.
Once operational, the new heat pump, built by German manufacturer Sustainable Process Heat (SPH), will work as part of a larger industrial cooling and heating system to supply steam for processing at temperatures of up to 195°C (383°F). By almost completely replacing the facility’s existing fossil fuel boiler, the butane-water heat pump will help cut carbon emissions by an anticipated 90%.
Details of the installation were shared by Tim Hamacher, Managing Director at SPH, during a presentation at the Industrial Refrigeration Network (IRN) conference, held June 6–7 in Rottenburg am Neckar, Germany. Hamacher presented alongside Sven Leimpek, Sales Manager for Germany at Vahterus, the manufacturer of the heat pump’s shell and plate heat exchanger.
Decarbonization
The new high-temperature heat pump will work alongside a mechanical vapor recompression (MVR) unit to complement the facility’s existing two ammonia (R717) chillers – with a combined cooling capacity of 6MW (1,706TR) – and a 2MW (569TR)-capacity GEA ammonia heat pump.
Year-round, the ammonia chillers and heat pump generate hot water at up to 70°C (158°F). While this is used for space heating during the winter, it is often wasted during warmer months. The new butane–water heat pump will recover this excess heat and lift it to 115°C (239°F). The MVR unit then boosts it further to 195°C, supplying steam to the facility’s production process.
During the seven months a year when the waste heat is not recovered for space heating, the new heat pump will replace the facility’s fossil fuel boiler to produce net-zero emissions steam, noted Hamacher.
“The combination of a steam-producing heat pump with an MVR system is more efficient than doing a two-stage heat pump at these temperatures,” explained Hamacher during his presentation. “So we are concentrating on doing the phase change between feedwater and steam, and then letting the MVR systems do the rest of the list.”
“The combination of a steam-producing heat pump with an MVR system is more efficient than doing a two-stage heat pump at these temperatures.”
Tim Hamacher, Managing Director at SPH
Factory acceptance testing
SPH’s heat pump has been under development since 2023 as part of the AHEAD (Advanced Heat Pump Demonstrator) project. Factory acceptance testing of the technology was completed in April this year, and commissioning was due to take place in early July, according to Hamacher.
“Together with the Austrian Institute for Technology and Takeda, we have conducted many simulations to build a system that takes heat from the existing heat pumps,” he noted.
Due to limitations of the test bed, SPH was only able to test the heat pump at 50% capacity – either by running one of the unit’s two compressors at full load or both compressors at partial load. Under these conditions, the system delivered 600 kW (170.6 TR) of thermal output.
The heat pump used a heat source at 74.5°C (166°F) to produce steam at 119°C (246°F) and achieved a COP of 4.4. According to Hamacher, the unit showed slightly better efficiency at partial load than what is anticipated under full-load conditions during real-world operation.
Hamacher said that testing highlighted the importance of controlling water levels in the system to ensure efficient heat transfer and to protect the plates in the heat exchanger.
