Evaluation and Identification of Waste Heat Utilization Pathways: A Review

External factors such as climate change and the current energy crisis due to global conflicts lead to increasing relevance of energy consumption and energy procurement in the manufacturing industry. In addition to the growing call for sustainability, companies are struggling with rising energy costs and the power grid’s reliability, which endangers the competitiveness of companies and regions affected by high energy prices. Due to the range of available technologies and concepts for waste heat utilization, evaluation methodologies have been developed to assess the implementation’s technical and economic feasibility. In addition to the call for sustainability, implementing energy efficiency measures, especially to reduce the thermal energy demand, has become more relevant to combat rising energy prices and ensure competitiveness amid the current energy crisis. However, the complexity of technologies and available utilization methods require rigorous assessment. This chapter reviews the existing methodology for evaluating industrial waste heat utilization pathways.