How Energy Recovery Can Reduce Costs in 2025
January 31, 2025
The term heat recovery is an umbrella for the process of recovering thermal energy from existing processes, such as compressed air generation, and reusing it for other applications. This process is often called energy recovery or “energy recycling”. The primary advantage here is that the process heat generated by the compressor can be directly utilized, thus improving energy efficiency. However, this advantage depends on the compressor’s load; if heat is needed and the compressor is not running, no heat can be processed.
How does Compressed Air Energy Recovery Work?
Compressed air energy recovery offers a simple and innovative solution: compressors generate heat during compressed air generation. Indeed, the majority of electrical energy used by air compressors is converted into heat. Without any form of recovery, this energy is lost through radiation to the atmosphere or through cooling systems. However, with energy recovery systems, this heat can be effectively used to heat rooms, provide hot water, and more.
Depending on the technology used, up to 94% of the energy absorbed by the compressor can be recovered. This means significant savings if you use the free heat source of your compressor waste heat to heat your hall or workshop. Open up the many possibilities of heat recovery compressed air and benefit from a sustainable solution that reduces your costs at the same time.
How Quickly does Compressed Air Heat Recovery Pay Off?
Statistics show that compressed air typically accounts for about 12% of the total energy costs for industrial organizations, and this number can go up to 40% in some facilities. As mentioned earlier, up to 94% of the energy absorbed by compressors can be reused for heating through heat recovery. Therefore, your compressed air demand here is closely related to the energy available through heat recovery.
In our experience, the payback period for implementing a heat recovery system is usually only 9-18 months. This means that most customers can recoup their investment costs within a year to a year and a half through the saved heating costs. This makes compressed air heat recovery an extremely profitable investment for companies.
The Environmental and Financial Benefits of Energy Recovery
Social responsibility is forcing businesses to find new ways of reducing their carbon emissions and energy consumption. For this reason, companies are actively exploring ways to lower their carbon footprint and enhance energy efficiency. One area that offers corporations a significant opportunity to reduce CO2 emissions is recovering the waste heat from air compressors.
Implementing energy recovery solutions will quickly reduce your energy consumption and costs, as well as lower your facility’s carbon emissions. As a result, this will lower your operational costs and help you meet stricter emissions standards.
With Atlas Copco energy recovery, you repurpose otherwise wasted energy to reduce operational costs and support your sustainability goals. Utilizing your compressor’s energy twice creates a valuable, win-win opportunity.
How Much Energy can I Save with Energy Recovery?
Use our energy savings estimator below to estimate how much waste heat you can reuse from your compressors.
If you would like a more precise answer, you can contact one of our energy recovery experts now!
