Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MOVARC (Modified Vacuum Rankine Cycle)
Reporting period: 2018-06-01 to 2018-11-30
In the EU alone, 3,200 TWh of energy are consumed per year in the industrial sector, from which around 9.5% is lost in the form of waste heat, contributing significantly to the industry costs,to global warming and pollution (e.g. fossil fuels burnt in excess). In order to produce cheap and sustainable power, the exploitation of this wasted heat source must be optimized. Conventional power generation systems such as the Rankine cycle can only leverage residual heat with temperatures above 500 °C, which represents less than half of the total waste heat potential. Cobertrans has developed its MOVARC system, a simple, affordable and innovative generator capable of working using any heat source at low and medium temperature.
During Movarc’s Feasibility Study we assessed the technical, commercial, legal and financial activities that could integrate the execution plan for Phase 2. MOVARC’s commercialization strategy was set with targeted countries and stages. Our suppliers and partners were identified among our current contacts and MOVARC’s potential customers were selected among the most suitable industries (food, beverages and tobacco, cement, glass). Our FTO was demonstrated and we identified MOVARC’s legal requirements as product and the project’s menaces and contingency measures. After analysing the results of these activities, we concluded that the MOVARC project requires further technical development to define its optimal commercial format and that our business model may need to be reviewed to improve the expected profitability of MOVARC in the mid-term.
The innovative operating principle of the MOVARC system allows to reach an improvement of up to 9% in the heat to electricity transformation efficiency over conventional technologies (Rankine cycle) and 4% over emerging technologies (organic Rankine cycle, Kalina cycle and supercritical CO2 cycle). This unique performance will make profitable the waste heat recovery in processes working at low and mid temperatures and will enable any MOVARC customer to reduce its energy bill considerably while mitigating the effects of global warming. With MOVARC we expect to create a cumulated revenue of 835,890€ in 5 years of commercialization and we estimate to create 17 new positions in Cobertrans by 2025.