Solar heat is already used for Agro-Food industrial processes, mainly under 120°C. The FRIENDSHIP project will aim to demonstrate that solar heat can also be a reliable, user-friendly, high quality and cost-effective resource to meet the heat requirements for other industrial sectors as Textile, Plastics, Wood, Metal and Chemistry. To this end, the project plans to bring together research centres, industry leaders, technologies & heat suppliers into the same consortium in order to unite skills towards the boost and control of the heat supply temperature according to processes needs.Different coupling of technological and control innovations will be investigated: optimization of heat transfer coefficients; coupling and reliability of different solar technologies; introduction of high-temperature heat pumps; combined heat storage bringing flexibility on both solar and process loops with guarantees of continuous operation as well as plug-and-play integration; thermal chillers for cooling demand; and smart control to ease operation of the overall installation according to the process specifications. The proposed systems will be able to supply together heat at temperature up to 300°C and negative cold at temperature down to -40°C. In order to guarantee the replicability and scalability of the proposed demonstration, specific work will be carried out with world-class industries involved in the consortium (regulatory studies, financial incentive schemes, local energy markets creation), especially turned towards relevant users cases: industrial sites and parks in European countries where solar heat is currently underused.Ultimately, the project will evaluate to what extent high share of solar heat heating and cooling will allow to reduce the dependence of industrial processes on carbon energies and associated polluting emissions, and to quantify economic gains related to the use of solar energy in a context of a changing fossil fuel market and changing climatic constraints.

SUSHEAT develops and validates, up to TRL 5, 3 novel enabling technologies: high-temperature heat pump (HT-HP), Phase Change Material (PCM) bio-inspired Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system, and Control & Integration Twin (CIT) system; for heat upgrade in top-level labs. It will attain an efficient heat upgrade up to 150-250 °C thanks to the use the innovative Stirling-based HT-HP, working with hellium and enlarging the industrial exploitability of heat upgrade systems, reaching a COP up to 2.8 for temperature ratios of 1.2. The integration of innovative TES will ensure a reliable, flexible, and customizable heat delivery with full decoupling from any waste heat recovery and renewables availability. Moreover, its CIT will provide user-friendly tools and a digital twin for the control system and advising industrial stakeholders, based on smart decision-making algorithms. SUSHEAT will bring an effective self-assessment of the most suited heat upgrade system integration including not only its key enabling components but, beyond, also leveraging on off-the-self RES-based units, particularly solar thermal collectors even enlarging the feasibility of Concentrating Solar Power systems that can extend its operation working at low temperature. Two case-studies are replicated for validation at TRL5, and 4 additional cases are analysed in-depth to cover other sectors as Pulp & Paper, Beverages, Petrochemical, Textile & leather and basic metals. By developing industry-focused self-assessment tools, and directly engaging different industrial stakeholders, SUSHEAT will contribute to identify the target industrial processes and sites which would benefit from the concept, rising awareness of various heat upgrade benefits within the industry and providing solutions to maximize the industrial efficiency while contributing to the sector’s decarbonization, reducing the GHG emissions up to 145 gCO2/kWh (excluding solar contribution and based on EU 2020 intensity and the use NG).

SHIP2FAIR aims to foster the integration of solar heat in industrial processes (SHIP) from the agro–food sector, by developing and demonstrating a set of tools and methods for the development of industrial solar heat projects during its whole life-cycle. Thus, the project results will consist in a (1) Replication tool for easily assessing the techno-economic feasibility of a SHIP project and supporting its design; (2) a Control tool understand as a DSS to support the operation of the complete process, (3) a comprehensive guide for supporting stakeholders in the design, commissioning and operation of their SHIP projects, and (4) a complete capacity building program, addressing both professionals and students interested in SHIP applications in the agro-food sector. These results will be demonstrated and validated at 4 demo-sites, including representative use cases of the agro-food sector like spirits distillation (Martini & Rossi), ham drying (ABC Industries), sugar boiling (RAR Group) and wine fermentation and stabilization (RODA Wineries). As a results of this demonstration, SHIP2FAIR, aims to achieve up to a 40% of solar fraction with a total of 2.9 kW of installed power for producing 4.04 GWh and allowing 403 m3 of fossil fuels and 1,145 TeqCO2 per year. In order to fulfil these challenges a competitive consortium of EU leading entities has been gathered including 4 RTOs (CIRCE, CEA, ISMB and BE2020) 2 Engineering companies (RINA-C and SOLID), 2 Solar Technology Providers (TVP and ISG) and, 4 agro-food companies already mentioned, 2 sectorial associations (EUREC and SCOOP) and one Utility (EDF), addressing the complete SHIP projects value-chain.