The use of waste heat or low-exergy heat sources represents a strategic opportunity to reduce the environmental footprint and operation cost of industrial processes. The absorption heat transformer, also known as absorption heat pump type II, is a thermal machine which can boost the temperature of a heat flow by using a negligible amount of electrical power.However, owing to the lack of established technical knowledge and the absence of comprehensive recordings of successful heat transformer applications, the feasibility and reliability of absorption heat transformers have been questioned and the diffusion of this technology remained limited.Therefore, in this paper, all the industrial applications of the absorption heat transformer that are recorded in previous literature and yet unpublished reports are presented and discussed.In addition to literature research, intense knowledge exchange with three leading manufacturers of absorption heat transformers gave an accurate perspective on the technological level of commercial products and operative installations. It is shown that between 1981 and 2019, 48 absorption heat transformers have been installed in 42 plants with a total capacity of ≈ 134 MW. Two main implementation periods, separated by 25 years of infrequent heat transformer installations, have been recognised. More than 74 % of the installations were in Asia. Approximately 61 % of the heat transformer installations were applied into the chemical industry.Therefore, through the analysis of the technical challenges and their solutions, along with related economical aspects of heat transformer installations, the effective state-of-the-art of 1
The so-called Energiewende is a complex task with a variety of stakeholders, regulations, technical infrastructure, and proposed solutions. Buildings are an important sector for increasing resource and energy efficiency, as in Germany around 35 % of end energy usage can be attributed to them. Digital applications can help reduce these emissions through more efficient planning, operating, renovation, or demolition. Depending on the task and the parties involved, the complexity of descriptions and data models can vary from simple energy efficiency labels used in the labeling process of buildings to complex individual data models used for simulation. However, these specific information systems are often non-transferable, are hard to compare in their restrictions and requirements, and hence increase the overall costs of digital solutions. A good understanding is needed to preserve economic and ecological benefits while maintaining privacy and security aspects. To compare digital applications a variety of solutions are identified, namely frameworks, taxonomies, and ontologies. While Frameworks focus more on technological aspects and are complex to use, they provide an in-depth understanding. Taxonomies can be used for a less infrastructure-dependent comparison and provide simple relationships. Ontologies provide relationships and definitions while being task-dependent. We conclude that comparing the underlying data models of digital applications is a complex task and dependent on the application and its infrastructure. However, a variety of tasks refers to the same tools and data. After discussing these approaches, we then give an overview of digital applications developed by German researchers. Last we give an insight on how to combine these aspects in our ongoing research. To summarize, in this paper we give an overview of the complexity involved in transferring digital solutions in the building sector, provide a method used for comparing applications and describe a solution to compare infrastructure and digital tools built for it.
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