Waste heat recovery research wins Telford Premium Prize

Researchers at the Centre for Research into Energy Waste and Environment have been awarded a 2022 Telford Premium Prize by the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE).

Dr Anthony Giles, Dr Daniel Pugh, Professor Phil Bowen, Professor Richard Marsh, and Professor Tim O'Doherty were recognised for their paper titled, ‘A Waste Heat Recovery Strategy and its deployment: An Integrated Steelworks Case Study’ published in the ICE journal Waste and Resource Management.  

The paper received a Telford Premium Prize, awarded to recognise key papers across the ICE journals which are judged to be of exceptional quality and benefit to the civil engineering community.

The underpinning research was part of a large investment by TATA Steel (£1.1M) to the Centre for Research into Energy Waste and Environment (CREWE) to reduce energy and waste at the Port Talbot integrated Steelworks, coupled with a substantial EPSRC contract (£0.8M), and included an award-winning training programme.

The winning paper describes the conceptual and numerical development of a waste heat recovery strategy, using the large Port Talbot works as a case study. The site comprises a complex network of integrated energy systems, including by-product gas and process steam. Research demonstrated that an existing asset could be modified to exploit waste heat to raise additional steam, to offset other process demands and generate supplementary electricity through the installation of a turbine. In the paper, the proposed strategy and its development is discussed, along with the resultant carbon dioxide and energy savings (estimated to be 2.3 Mt and equivalent to £45 million respectively), over the initial 6-year period since its implementation.

Several PhD graduates worked on the programme, and have continued their research, including Dr Dan Pugh, who initially took up a post as researcher at the Gas Turbine Research Centre (GTRC), then for the FLEXIS project and has since been appointed to a tenured lectureship in the School of Engineering. Dr Tony Giles is a researcher at GTRC, co-funded by FLEXIS.

The Prize was presented by current ICE President, Ed McCann, to Dr Tony Giles (GTRC, FLEXIS) at the ICE Headquarters in London in October 2022.