Workshop & Excursion: Waste Gasification

08. - 09. May 2018
ECN, Westerduinweg 3, 1755 LE Petten, NL

As organic materials like biomass or waste are gasified, the chemical process creates a clean syngas, which can be used in CHP production and/or for production of biofuels and/or chemicals. Compared to other waste-to-energy methods like burning, or incineration, the gasification process allows the syngas to be cleaned of contaminants prior to its use. Creating syngas through gasification is almost like closing the circle, or closing the loop, on waste’s lifecycle.

IEA SHC Task 67: Compact Thermal Energy Storage Materials within Components within Systems

This Task aims to push forward the compact thermal energy storage (CTES) technology developments to accelerate their market introduction through the international collaboration of experts from materials research, components development and system integration. These technologies are based on the classes of phase change materials (PCM) and thermochemical materials (TCM). Materials from these classes will be studied, improved, characterized and tested in components.

IEA EBC Annex 73: Towards Net Zero Energy Resilient Public Communities

Public buildings such as hospitals and educational institutions often house critical infrastructure that depends on sufficient energy and resource supply. The aim of the annex was to develop tools for the planning process of resilient, efficient and low-emission energy systems for such building clusters.

IEA EBC Annex 70: Building Energy Epidemiology: Analysis of Real Building Energy Use at Scale

Within the framework of the IEA-EBC Annex 70, causes of deviations between calculated and actual energy consumption in buildings were empirically investigated and requirements for data quality, characteristics and security were developed. Furthermore, recommendations were developed regarding the use of internationally uniform standards and methods for data collection, processing and evaluation.

IEA HPT Task 42: Heat pumps in smart energy grids for sustainable cities

The aim of Annex 42 is to analyse the technical possibilities as well as the economic/regulatory framework conditions of heat pumps for load balancing in smart grids, which are largely controlled by electricity supplier, and to investigate the impact on thermal consumers and possible potentials, in order to work out economic incentive models for load shifting and the benefits for energy supply companies and end customers on this basis.

IEA EBC Annex 80: Resilient Cooling for Residential and Small Non-Residential Buildings

In the project cost and energy-efficient and non-fossil solutions for cooling and ensuring summer suitability are systematically analyzed and further developed. As part of the international R&D co-operation, fragmented knowledge is bundled and made available to the Austrian construction and mechanical engineering industry. Austrian expertise in climate-sensitive building optimization is disseminated internationally through leading participation in this international research.

IEA HPT Task 41: Cold Climate Heat Pumps

The aim was to increase the efficiency of outdoor air heat pumps in cold climates in locations with low outside temperatures of up to -25°C. Newly developed heat exchanger concepts were tested and optimized regarding their icing behaviour. Different circuit modifications were modelled and simulation studies for low ambient temperatures were carried out.

IEA EBC Annex 60: New generation computational tools for building and community energy systems based on the Modelica and Functional Mockup Interface standards

The objective was to develop and demonstrate next-generation computational tools that allow building and community energy grids to be designed and operated as integrated systems. The work conducted in Annex 60 has helped to share, further develop and deploy free open-source contributions of previously uncoordinated activities in modeling and simulation, based on the Modelica and Functional Mockup Interface standards.

IEA EBC Annex 61 - Business and Technical Concepts for Deep Energy Retrofit of Public Buildings

Target of IEA EBC Annex 61 was the development of technical and economical concepts for Deep Energy Retrofit of public buildings. To force high-quality and energy efficient retrofit, besides the enhancement and dissemination of innovative, technical retrofit concepts, the focus was in the development of innovative business models (energy-contracting).

IEA EBC Annex 64: Optimised Performance of Energy Supply Systems with Exergy Principles (Working period 2014-2018)

To reduce CO2 emissions in cities, an overall understanding of energy conversion processes is necessary, which also takes temperature levels into account. This is particularly important when alternative heat sources such as waste heat, ambient heat, solar and geothermal energy are to be used, as these often have a low temperature level, i.e. a low exergy content. Accordingly, urban energy systems are analysed and optimised within the framework of the IEA EBC Annex 64 with the help of the exergy approach.

IEA EBC Annex 75: Cost-effective Building Renovation at District Level Combining Energy Efficiency & Renewables

For the conversion of existing buildings into low(st) energy buildings with low greenhouse gas emissions, it is important to know which strategies are most cost-effective to reduce emissions and primary energy consumption of the buildings. In particular, it is important to find the right balance between energy efficiency measures and renewable energy measures. This question is addressed in this project.

IEA HPT Annex 49: Design and integration of heat pumps for nZEB

A dominating concept to reach a nearly Zero Energy Building (nZEB) is the combination of solar PV systems and heat pumps. The extended scope of the Annex 49 regards the balance of single buildings and groups of buildings/neighbourhoods, a thorough investigation of heat pump integration options for nZEBs and nZE neighbourhoods by means of monitoring and simulation as well as the design and control optimization for heat pumps in nZEB and the integration into energy systems.

IEA EBC Annex 62: Ventilative Cooling

The main goal of the Annex 62 is to make ventilative cooling an attractive and energy efficient cooling solution to avoid overheating in buildings. Ventilation is already present in buildings through mechanical and/or natural systems and it can remove excess heat gains as well as increase air velocities to widen the thermal comfort range. The results from the Annex facilitate better possibilities for both design purposes and for energy performance calculation.

IEA HPT Annex 43: Fuel Driven Sorption Heat Pumps

The project aimed at investigating the performance and market potential of gas-fired absorption heat pumps (AHPs) in domestic and small commercial or industrial buildings or applications. Selected processes were simulated for various types of buildings in order to calculate the energetic, ecological and economical potential of this technology. The results were compared with monitoring data of a gas-fired AHP system. In addition, a market survey including market barriers for gas-fired AHPs in Austria was conducted and a list of market supporting measures was compiled.

IEA EBC Annex 72: Assessing life cycle related environmental impacts caused by buildings

The construction sector has great potential to reduce its energy consumption and the associated environmental impacts. The IEA EBC Annex 72 therefore focuses on the harmonization of methods for the assessment of construction-specific and operational environmental impacts (primary energy requirements, greenhouse gas emissions and other indicators) throughout the life cycle of buildings.

IEA EBC Annex 71: Building Energy Performance Assessment Based on In-situ Measurements

The requirements on building envelope and on building technology are steadily increasing. There is a lack of measurement and analysis methods to control the quality of the built implementation and to optimize the building operation. This project developed a methodological basis to enable an in-situ evaluation of the actual energy performance and building operation. For this purpose, it investigated methods to generate data-driven building models favouring the use of already available on-board data.

IEA EBC Annex 67: Energy Flexible Buildings (working period 2015 - 2019)

The project increased the knowledge on building Energy Flexibility and the regarding potential buildings can provide to energy grids. The critical aspects and possible solutions to utilize the Energy Flexibility that buildings can provide were identified and a report of the “Principles of Energy Flexible Buildings” will be published in 2019.

IEA HPP Annex 47: Heat Pumps in District Heating and Cooling Systems

A significant use of alternative heat sources with the help of district heating and cooling networks is a major challenge for a sustainable energy supply. In times of increasing shares of fluctuating producers such as PV and wind energy, the relevance of heat pumps increases. Within the framework of the IEA HPT Annex 47, potentials and barriers for the integration of heat pumps in DHC networks were analyzed.

IEA EBC Annex 57: Evaluation of the design-specific CO2 emissions and the gray energy

The IEA-EBC Annex 57 evaluated methods of construction-related embodied environmental impacts and embodied energy and related international best practice projects and their approaches. Based on these findings, methodological guidelines as well as measures for their application at the international level and for the planning of buildings - with lower embodied energy and embodied greenhouse gas emissions - were derived.

IEA EBC Annex 66: Definition and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Buildings

Given the considerable implications of occupants' presence and behavior for buildings’ performance, IEA EBC Annex 66 aims to set up a standard occupant behavior definition platform, establish a quantitative simulation methodology to model occupant behavior in buildings, and understand the influence of occupant behavior on building energy use and the indoor environment.