Status and prospect of solar heat for industrial processes in China

In the past decades, solar heat for industrial processes (SHIP) have been rapidly developed and applied, and also getting more attention in the world. China is still the largest energy consumer with industry accounting for almost 70% of total energy consumption. Low- and medium-temperature heat takes up 45% of process heat, holding 50%-70% of industrial energy consumption, which provides a favorable condition for solar application.

China has built some demonstration projects to make industrial processes well integrated with solar heating systems. This paper briefly presents the status of China's energy consumption, integration of SHIP, as well as available solar technologies. 10 typical industrial sectors are selected to specifically describe their potential of SHIP.

Moreover, 26 SHIP cases covering the 10 sectors in China are presented by field researches, with their capacity of energy saving and emissions reduction specifically investigated according to their own proportion of SHIP. The potential of SHIP in the selected 10 sectors are further predicted by optimistically and conservatively making their proportion of SHIP 5.5% and 2% respectively during the period of 2016-2020.

The prediction shows that at least 39.40 million tons of coal equivalent and 98.22 million tons of CO2 emission can be reduced in 2020 in China's entire industrial sectors although solar supplies different proportions of heat demand in different industrial sectors.