IWA Project Innovation Award 2018

TU Delft, together with Waternet and Sanquin, is nominated for the IWA Project Innovation Award 2018 with the project Thermal Energy Recovery from Drinking Water. Whether we win gold, silver, bronze or even  The  Kiran & Pallavi Patel Grand Innovation Award 2018 will be announced during the IWA Project Innovation Award Ceremony on 17 September, in Tokyo, at the IWA World Congress & Exhibition. The IWA Project Innovation Award is a prestigious prize that recognizes and promotes excellence and innovation in water management, research and technology.”

Thermal energy recovery from drinking water: exploitation of a renewable energy source

Waternet, the public water utility of Amsterdam, wants to operate climate neutrally in 2020: no greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Energy recovery from the water cycle has a huge potential to contribute to this ambition: the recovered energy is an alternative for fossil fuel.

An innovative option is thermal energy recovery from drinking water.

In Amsterdam, drinking water is produced from surface water, resulting in high drinking water temperatures in summer and low drinking water temperatures in winter. This makes it possible to apply both cold and heat recovery. Cold recovery from drinking water has been introduced at ‘Sanquin’, a company that produces plasma products from blood which needs cooling capacity. A joint project of Waternet, Sanquin and Delft University of Technology showed that cold recovery from drinking water, as an alternative for traditional cooling machines, results in a reduction of GHG emissions, has a positive financial business case and does not affect the microbiological drinking water quality.