Digitalization of heat exchangers reduces the world's carbon emissions

Swedish Alfa Laval is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of plate heat exchangers: a product that provides cooling and heating in various industrial processes as well as in our homes. According to the Paris Agreement, the world’s carbon emissions must be reduced to half by year 2030 and reach close to zero by 2050 at the latest. Forty percent of the carbon dioxide reduction will come through energy efficiency and plays an even more important role in the coming decade.

“The heat exchangers play an extremely important part in the climate change, because they are actually everywhere,” says Madeleine Gilborne, Head of Clean Technologies, and Vice President of the Energy Division at Alfa Laval.

The amount of heat exchangers Alfa Laval produces in one year saves 50 gigawatts of energy.

“This is energy that we can use to heat up 10 million homes in Europe for a whole year. It says a lot about the potential in heat exchangers. It is an unbelievable opportunity for energy efficiency,” Gilborne says.

The heat exchanger often has a key position in cooling and heating processes and needs to perform optimally all through its life cycle.

“The key to our technology is making these processes more effective, so that they become cost efficient and competitive — and thus reduce carbon emissions.”

Performance monitoring is key

A few years back, Alfa Laval started a dialogue with Microsoft that led to a partnership.

“Heat exchangers are Alfa Laval’s core business. To optimize it, they would have to build digital services on the product. That is what we are good at, building software,” says Christoffer Sundgren, Senior Industry Executive at Microsoft.

If the efficiency in a heat exchanger starts to drop, then the demand for energy increases throughout the whole process – unnecessarily. Around 1 to 2,5 percent of the world's carbon emissions come from heat exchangers that are not kept clean. That is why it is paramount that the heat exchangers function optimally. By finding an easy way to check on the exchangers’ performance status regularly, Alfa Laval can proactively secure an emission reduction.

“We want to use both our companies’ respective strengths. By putting them together we can shed a light on the heat exchanger’s role, optimize them, reduce the energy demand, and thus also the carbon emissions,” Madeleine Gilborne explains.

Heat camera with AI

The companies join forces to develop a thermal recognition camera with an AI function, with which a regular mobile phone can detect the heat around the heat exchanger. The picture is then uploaded to Alfa Laval’s data base, which immediately reveals any inconsistencies in the heat transfer, while also automatically suggesting actions.

“We have developed this model together with Alfa Laval’s experts. That is the foundation of our partnership – to digitize intelligence,” says Microsoft’s Christoffer Sundgren.

The partnership between Microsoft and Alfa Laval is built on common goals – to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to become climate neutral by the year 2030.

“The whole idea of our collaboration is in the spirit of sustainability, which is a footing between our companies. Business logic is also granted,” he adds.

Companies need to co-operate

Microsoft has brought its AI knowledge and platform to Alfa Laval’s products and services, to make heat transformation more efficient and to ultimately reduce carbon emissions.

“We realize that no company in this industry can face the climate change by itself. We need to co-operate to have an impact,” says Madeleine Gilborne.

“When two big companies co-operate, they have the power to make real difference. They can invest and make things better together, whether it is about energy efficiency, water conservation, or similar. We have the power to drive the process forward faster,” Christoffer Sundgren concludes.