Photo: Henning Larsen Architects

New urban area will be heated with surplus heat from laboratories

Why not use surplus heat from X-ray machines for water heating in private homes? A new EU-funded low-temperature district heating project is developing sustainable solutions for better exploitation of cooling energy, surplus heat and renewable energy in the district heating system.

16.11.2017

In the near future, the citizens in Brunnshög, a new suburb outside Lund in Sweden, are going to have their homes heated with the surplus heat from two local research laboratories.

Brunnshög consists of low energy buildings, and here Kraftringen Energi AB will develop a district heating system that can convert very low temperatures into heating of the buildings most of the year.

The solution is part of the EU-supported Cool District Heating project, which will develop and test new low-temperature district heating solutions in Høje Taastrup and Lund, Sweden.

Hot water with surplus heat from X-ray machines

The water in Brunnshög will be heated with the aid of cooling energy and surplus heat from the Max IV research lab, which contains some of the most powerful X-ray machines in the world.

The European Spallation Source (ESS), which is under construction, will also play an important role in the future energy system in Brunnshög, where up to 40,000 people will live and work.

The area is being developed in stages, and by 2050 Kraftringen aims to be able to heat all buildings with low-temperature district heating.

“We will start by testing how we can exploit surplus heat from Max IV in a number of buildings in a small area. When ESS is in operation from 2020 onwards, there will be enough surplus heat to supply the whole of Brunnshög,” explains project manager Göran Strandberg from Kraftringen AB.