Energy efficiency challenge aims to find new ways to recover heat from waste generated during soda production

Ennomotive, the leading open innovation platform for engineering challenges, just launched a competition to find new solutions to recover energy/heat from the waste originated in the soda manufacturing process.

For each ton of produced soda, there is up to 8 m3 of post-distillation slurry released, which means a stream of around 800 m3/h. It is not feasible to reuse the low-heat stream, with temperatures in the range of 100-115 degC, in existing processes. Moreover, standard heat exchanging technologies seem to be non-suitable due to the fact that part of the dissolved inorganic salts will precipitate upon cooling. The combination of those two factors calls for an innovative solution in order to usefully capture the wasted energy.

CIECH, a leading European soda manufacturer, is looking for solutions which allow the recovered energy to be utilised in:

– electricity generation

– conversion to cold/powering cooling systems

– re-use in the soda manufacturing process

This online competition is open worldwide to any professional, company, tech centre, student or Academia from different industries and technical backgrounds that want to propose a solution for this challenge.

Ennomotive offers €20,000 in prizes to be shared among the best ideas for this competition. Interested participants should sign up at www.ennomotive.com and submit their solution before August 19th.