A revolutionary and patented compact device that recovers the majority of the heat from waste water in residential and commercial places

Project Information

Obox

Grant agreement ID: 745228

DOI

10.3030/745228

Project closed

EC signature date 28 November 2016

Start date 1 November 2016

End date 28 February 2017

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

ENERGY HARVESTING TECH
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Obox (A revolutionary and patented compact device that recovers the majority of the heat from waste water in residential and commercial places)

Reporting period: 2016-11-01 to 2017-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Hot water costs a lot of energy to heat, yet most of that heat goes down the drain. Due to lack of effective and efficient solutions at small scales in residential buildings and small businesses, still a huge amount of energy is wasted for heating the water. In Europe alone, that’s a €15B waste every year and this is as high as €18B in North America. Current solutions are mostly focusing on more efficient boilers and not heat recovery, and the heat recovery solutions don’t have high efficiency and are suffering steady loss of efficiency therefore their payback periods are so long.
The goal of the project is to fully commercialize the Obox®; a patented fully automatic filter-less system, which recovers 71% of the heat and use it to heat the water again therefore, cuts the hot water bill by 63%. Using Obox® will lead to major saving in energy (264TW/yr) and CO2 emissions (150 million tons of CO2/yr) if every dwelling in EU28 is equipped with an Obox®.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Within the feasibility study, a detailed assessment of the market size, customer segments and competitors was carried out. EHTech carried out a particularly focused analysis of the potential ESCO business model and it was established that for the small scale commercial units EHTech is targeting (hair salons), the capital expenditure required would not achieve the return on investment that would be generated from direct sales to construction companies. Given these results, EHTech confirmed its anticipated need to concentrate its efforts on the growth of the sale channels and estimated its five year financial projections on the model.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

During the Phase 1 feasibility assessment, EHTech accomplished a full analysis of the technical and business potential of Obox® and Obox® C. Throughout the duration of the project, EHTech has expanded their knowledge of the heat recovery industry, the potential efficiency and processing of the technology and in particular the European market. EHTEch established that to achieve the company’s desired goal and become the leaders in heat recovery from waste water, the technology must be optimized for reductions in costs of materials, increase in efficiency and the aesthetic delivery. Obox® technology, with its competitive advantages, puts EHTech in a strong position as current technologies available require a lot of maintenance, incur high costs and do not deliver ROI satisfaction. It is crucial that EHTech advance their current technology and commercial readiness levels to experience significant growth and development in the following years.

Obox Version 3 - Image 4

Obox Version 3 - Image 2

Obox Version 3 - Image 1

Obox Version 3 - Image 5

Obox Version 3 - Image 3