Abstract: One of the biggest challenges facing society today is the decarbonisation of heating for our homes and businesses. Addressing this challenge is the focus of much of the research carried out by the Sustainable Thermal Energy Technologies research group. Currently, over 50% of all energy used in industry is lost through recoverable waste heat, but only a fraction is actually recovered. There are several reasons for this, but the largest is the lack of applications for the waste heat, particularly at low grades (≤100°C).

This talk will present some of the work being done to develop a thermal transformer to upgrade this waste heat from low temperatures to higher temperatures in order to increase the potential applications for it; either for reuse in the original industrial process, or to replace primary energy use elsewhere.