Innovative heat use: Hesse's sewage treatment plants provide heating power!

Innovative heat use: Hesse's sewage treatment plants provide heating power!

Kassel, Deutschland - The energy transition in Hesse requires innovative solutions for heat supply in urban regions. Currently, the heat supply in many parts of Germany is mainly ensured by fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas. According to Uni Kassel A current study is dedicated to the use of heat from sewage treatment plants for heating buildings on behalf of the state energy agency Hessen (Lea).

By examining the wastewater heat potential of 187 Hessian sewage treatment plants, a lot of around 4,000 GWH heat could be developed annually, which corresponds to about 5-6 % of the total building-relevant heat consumption in Hesse. This heat could be fed into district heating networks, with temperatures of 70-80 ° C.

sustainable heat sources

Waste water heat is available all year round and usually reaches temperatures above 10 ° C. In addition, alternative heat sources such as river heat pumps and solar thermal energy can also effectively complement the use of wastewater heat. Lea Hessen emphasizes that heat networks use different energy sources and thus enable the local use of regionally generated energy. Here, waste heat from industrial plants can be a valuable resource.

Central heat supply via heat networks has decisive advantages: it leads to lower heat losses when heating up compared to decentralized systems, enables the storage of energy on the network and significantly reduces CO2 emissions.

pioneering work in heat planning

An important step in Hessian heat planning was taken into the heating las Hessen with the integration of potential data. This atlas not only indicates the thermal hardware in Hesse, but also identifies suitable waste heat sources for heat supply. In 2024 the heating las won the 1st place in the egovernment competition in the category "Sustainability through digitization and IT".

The challenge of ensuring sustainable heat supply requires efficient planning and organization of the infrastructure. The Fraunhofer ifam supports with aptitude analyzes and GIS-based inventory and potential analyzes, for new heating networks Identify. This is crucial for the successful implementation of the climate goals and the increase in energy efficiency in Hesse.