Capstone: Waste Heat Recovery Diagnostics
Hands-on: diagnose eight waste-heat call-outs — flue economiser, condenser recovery, air-to-air, fouled exchanger, flash steam, timing and temperature mismatches — then calculate, verify and prescribe the fix.
30 min read · Jacob Willis, Net Zero Lead
You've learned where waste heat comes from, how to grade it, how heat exchangers and recovery devices work, and the four conditions a project must meet to pay. This capstone sends you round a site as the recovery engineer — finding the heat going to waste, sizing what you could get back, and judging whether each project is actually worth doing. A typical facility loses 20–30% of its fuel as waste heat, so the opportunities are everywhere. But a recovery project only earns when supply, demand, temperature and timing all align — and the skill is as much in spotting the bad matches as in sizing the good ones.