Zero waste Heat vessel towards relevant ENergy savings also thanks to IT technologies

The European Commission set ambitious goals to decarbonise the EU shipping sector, which is among the most polluting sectors. The aim is to make it an innovator in maritime pollution reduction. The EU-funded ZHENIT project will promote waste heat recovery (WHR) as a ready-to-implement solution to fully untap ‘on-board WH potential’ to achieve 2030 IMO/EU targets for shipping sector decarbonisation. The project will develop and validate WHR solutions and digital tools at different temperature levels for several on-board services like cooling, power and desalination, valorising heat in diverse vessel processes.

ZHENIT will exploit WHR as key and “ready-to-scale up” solutions to reach the decarbonization targets by validating different solutions systems at various temperature levels, for different end-product (cooling, power, desalination) and optimizing integration/performance thanks to thermal energy storage (TES).

ZHENIT solutions will undergo to validation campaign on-board of a cargo vessel and in laboratory conditions. ZHENIT will showcase how WH-to-X, if properly integrated with Digital Solutions (energy monitoring and optimized management) and hybrid propulsion (wingsail), can bring up to a 25% reduction of vessel energy consumption. Validation results will drive a replication roadmap (at regulatory and economic level) towards 2027-2030 marketability of ZHENIT solutions.

More information about the project can be found at the project website.