Energy-intensive industries use more than half of the energy consumed by European industry, two thirds of it for process heating, much of it below 200 °C and still largely produced by burning gas. Heat pumps could replace a large share of it, but every installation tends to become a custom, one-off project.
ZEnITh develops a standardised yet flexible system that can be retrofitted into existing plants: modular high-temperature heat pumps running on natural hydrocarbon refrigerants, latent thermal energy storage based on phase-change materials (20–130 °C), and AI-based planning and energy management tools that coordinate heat pumps, storage, on-site solar power and production. Targets include a COP of at least 3.5 at a 60 K temperature lift (at least 2 for cascaded modules above 100 K) and at least 20 per cent lower life-cycle climate impact than competing technologies.
After small-scale testing in Trondheim, a full-scale system of around 650 kW heating, 250 kW cooling and 500 kWh thermal storage will replace gas boilers at an aluminium surface-treatment plant in Italy. Feasibility studies in six further sectors show how the solution can be replicated across Europe. ZEnITh is an Innovation Action supported by Horizon Europe (Grant no. 101294501) with a budget of €9.65 million, coordinated by Clivet (Italy) with 17 partners from six countries.
SINTEF Energy Research in ZEnITh
SINTEF Energy Research leads the design of the heat pump architecture – cycle configuration, hydrocarbon working fluids, oil management and dynamic modelling together with KU Leuven and NTNU. Our largest activity is the small-scale demonstrator: a 200 kW cascade heat pump installed in a purpose-built test facility at the SINTEF/NTNU laboratories in Trondheim, which SINTEF and NTNU jointly operate through a test campaign that validates performance and the advanced on-board control before full-scale deployment. SINTEF also contributes to the system integration simulations, the energy management system and the full-scale demonstration, building on experience from previous projects.