Energy-intensive, high-temperature processing industries lose more than 50% of their energy as waste heat during production, accounting for 200 TWh of power each year in Europe. While many technologies exist to convert waste heat into electricity, their adoption at an industrial scale remains limited. Specific barriers—such as the efficiency and cost of these renewable technologies, along with the challenges of integrating them into existing production lines—have restricted their widespread use as industrial heat recovery solutions. Innovative approaches that improve efficiency through new modular technologies are therefore urgently required, allowing retrofitting into production lines to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The primary goal of INFERNO is to develop a new hybrid platform system integrating thermophotovoltaics (TPV), metasurface collectors (MetaS), and thermoelectric generators (TEG), aiming to achieve a breakthrough in sustainable energy harvesting from industrial waste heat. The project will develop new infrared-sensitive, low-bandgap (<0.7 eV) TPV cells with integrated plasmonic metamaterials to enhance photon absorption and improve overall heat-to-electricity conversion efficiency to 25%, alongside high-performance TEG devices made from earth-abundant materials with an efficiency of 10%. Using an innovative design strategy, these components will be combined into a modular, hybrid energy harvesting system that can be easily integrated into production lines.
To achieve this goal, INFERNO brings together expertise in materials research, modeling, cell fabrication, thermoelectricity, and electronics on a pan-European scale. The integrated hybrid system and its components (TPV, MetaS, TEG) will be tested in three pilot demonstrations across three countries to convert waste heat into electricity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
