Heat Pump Studio/ explained on one plant, then priced on yours
Steam at 200 °C
for a job that needs 96 °C.
A two-line beverage plant heats its CIP water with steam from a 2 t/h biomass boiler. Here is what that costs, how an industrial heat pump does the same job on electricity, and why low-cost electricity makes it cheaper still. Then put in your own temperatures and fuel.
01/ the mismatch
Twice as hot
as the job needs.
The boiler makes steam at 200 °C so the CIP set can make water at 96 °C. It works — but it is like boiling a kettle to warm your hands. The fuel is spent getting far hotter than needed, and some of it is lost on the way across the site.
02/ what it costs today
₹9.5 of biomass
puts 2.8 kWh into the water.
- You buy1 kgof briquettes for ₹9.5
- It holds4.4 kWhof heat in the fuel
- The boiler keeps3.2 kWhin the steam · 72%
- The water gets2.8 kWhafter mains, traps and condensate
- So each kWh costs₹3.39of hot water for CIP
- CIP heat a year
- 2,346 MWh391 kW, 6,000 h
- Steam it takes
- 730 kg/habout a third of the 2 t/h boiler
- Biomass burned for it
- 838 ta year
- What it costs
- ₹79.6 lakha year, fuel only
03/ the idea
A heat pump moves heat.
It doesn't make it.
Your fridge does this every day: it pulls heat out of the food and pushes it out through the coils at the back. A heat pump is a fridge built to be useful at the back. Here it pulls heat out of the chiller's warm water — heat the cooling tower would otherwise throw into the air — and pushes it into the CIP water at 96 °C.
- 1
It boils, cold
Inside the evaporator the refrigerant boils at about 25 °C. Boiling soaks up heat, so it pulls heat out of the chiller water running through the tubes and cools it from 35 to 30 °C. The chiller gets help it would otherwise pay for.
- 2
It gets squeezed
The compressor's pistons squeeze that vapour. Squeezing a gas heats it — the way a bicycle pump warms in your hand — so it leaves at about 115 °C and high pressure. This is the only part that uses electricity: about 130 kW here.
- 3
It gives the heat away
In the condenser the hot gas turns back into liquid and hands its heat to the CIP water, lifting it from 40 to 96 °C. What it hands over is the heat it took from the chiller water plus the compressor's work.
- 4
It drops back to cold
The warm liquid passes through the expansion valve into the low-pressure side. The pressure drop chills it to about 25 °C, ready to boil again. The loop is sealed: the same refrigerant goes round for years.
04/ 1 kWh in, 3 kWh out
One unit of electricity
delivers 3 units of heat.
So a kWh of hot water costs the electricity price divided by 3: ₹5.5 ÷ 3 = ₹1.83, against ₹3.39 from the boiler.
- Boiler fuel today
- ₹79.6 lakha year
- Heat pump electricity
- ₹43.0 lakha year at ₹5.5/kWh
- Lower by
- ₹36.6 lakha year · 46% of the heat bill
- Heat the chiller no longer dumps
- 1,564 MWha year
05/ low-cost electricity, low-cost heat
Every rupee off electricity
comes off the heat.
Because the heat costs the electricity price ÷ 3, every ₹1 off a unit of electricity takes 33 paise off a unit of heat. That is why we pair the heat pump with the electricity lever: green electricity contracted at ₹4.1/kWh brings the CIP water to ₹1.37 a kWh — ₹32.1 lakh a year instead of ₹79.6 lakh — and makes it close to zero-carbon.
The boiler stays: on standby for the CIP duty, and for any steam the plant still needs. The heat pump takes the base; the boiler covers peaks and maintenance.
06/ what these machines can do
Hot water, and steam,
from heat you already have.
Designed to 120 °C
Machines on the market reach 150–200 °C with piston, screw or turbo compressors. We design to 120 °C, where refrigerants, COP and service support are proven; above it the duty stays on fuel, solar thermal or electrode heat.
From 2 °C to 150 °C sources
Chiller and refrigeration condensers, compressor cooling, wastewater, exhaust air. The warmer the source, the higher the COP.
No waste heat? Use air
Air-source units make hot water, and low-pressure steam, from outdoor air. The COP is lower, so the electricity price matters even more.
Hundreds of kW to MW
Skids from a few hundred kW to several MW each, set beside the existing boiler and run first, with the boiler kept as backup.
For engineers · the arithmetic
Heat duty Q = ṁ · cp · ΔT = 1.67 kg/s × 4.19 kJ/kg·K × 56 K = 391 kW
Steam for it ṁs = Q / hfg = 391 kW / 1,940 kJ/kg ≈ 726 kg/h at ~15 bar
Fuel 3,800 kcal/kg × 1.163 Wh/kcal = 4.42 kWh/kg; × 0.72 boiler × 0.88 distribution = 2.80 kWh/kg → ₹9.5 / 2.80 = ₹3.39/kWh
COP Carnot limit Tcond / (Tcond − Tevap) with condensing at 101 °C and evaporating at 25 °C = 4.9; real machines reach about 60% of it → COP ≈ 3
Electricity and source heat P = Q / COP = 130 kW; heat taken from the chiller water = Q − P = 261 kW
Cost of heat ₹5.5 / 3 = ₹1.83/kWh; on green electricity ₹4.1 / 3 = ₹1.37/kWh
- Two filling lines; CIP and washers draw about 6 m³/h of hot water, heated from 40 °C to 96 °C, 6,000 hours a year.
- Biomass briquettes at ₹9.5/kg and 3,800 kcal/kg; boiler efficiency 72%; 12% lost between boiler and water (mains, traps, condensate, heat exchanger).
- Heat pump COP 3 delivering 96 °C from the chiller's condenser water at 35 → 30 °C; electricity at ₹5.5/kWh.
- Green electricity at ₹4.1/kWh landed, 25% below the grid price used above.
- Energy cost only: capex, maintenance and financing are set per plant. Illustrative, not an offer.
07/ your plant, your numbers
Is your duty
a heat pump duty?
Two temperatures decide almost everything: where the heat comes from and how hot it has to get. The gap between them sets the COP, the COP sets the cost, and the electricity you run it on decides whether any carbon moves.
Cost per kWh of useful heat
Carbon per kWh of useful heat
COP against delivery temperature, from a 30 °C source
In short/ Heat Pump Studio
Heat Pump Studio explains an industrial heat pump on one worked plant, then is a free browser calculator that tells you whether a heat duty suits an industrial heat pump and what the heat would cost, from two temperatures and the fuel it replaces.
A two-line beverage plant heats its CIP water (40 → 96 °C, about 391 kW) with 200 °C steam from a 2 t/h biomass boiler. Biomass at ₹9.5/kg puts about 2.8 kWh into the water per kg after boiler and distribution losses, so each kWh of hot water costs about ₹3.39 — ₹79.6 lakh a year for this duty. A heat pump takes heat from the chiller's 35 °C condenser water and delivers 96 °C water at a COP of about 3: it boils refrigerant in the evaporator, compresses it with a piston compressor to about 115 °C, condenses it to heat the CIP water, and expands it back to cold through a valve. On ₹5.5/kWh electricity a kWh of hot water costs ₹1.83, about ₹43 lakh a year — ₹36.6 lakh (46%) lower. Because heat costs the electricity price ÷ COP, green electricity at ₹4.1/kWh brings it to ₹1.37. The boiler stays on standby. Illustrative; energy cost only. The calculator then takes your own numbers: enter the heat source temperature, the delivery temperature the process needs, the annual useful heat, the boiler fuel and efficiency, and the electricity the heat pump would run on. The studio returns the coefficient of performance (COP) at that temperature lift, the cost of a kWh of useful heat against the fuel, the annual saving, the electricity the supply plan must carry, and the carbon avoided — which depends on whether the electricity is grid or contracted green. Every input is a slider, every result updates live, and the address bar carries the scenario so a link shares it.
What to take away
- Worked case: 2 filling lines, CIP water 40 → 96 °C at 6 m³/h, 6,000 h a year: about 391 kW and 2,346 MWh of heat a year.
- Today: 200 °C steam from a 2 t/h biomass boiler; biomass ₹9.5/kg, 3,800 kcal/kg, 72% boiler efficiency, 12% lost in distribution: ₹3.39 per kWh of hot water, about 838 t of biomass and ₹79.6 lakh a year.
- Heat pump: COP 3 from 35 °C chiller water to 96 °C; about 130 kW of electricity; ₹1.83 per kWh of heat at ₹5.5/kWh; ₹43.0 lakh a year; ₹36.6 lakh (46%) lower.
- On green electricity at ₹4.1/kWh the heat costs ₹1.37 per kWh.
- The COP curve is anchored to the published points of COP 3.4 at 80 °C and 2.3 at 135 °C delivery from a 30 °C source, and scaled by the Carnot ratio for other source temperatures; a warmer source such as a chiller condenser or recovered process heat raises the COP.
- The practical ceiling is 120 °C delivery. Above it the studio shows the physics but states that the duty stays on fuel in practice.
- Default fuels and prices: piped natural gas ₹55/SCM (10.4 kWh and 1.95 kg CO₂ per SCM), diesel ₹90/litre, furnace oil ₹62/litre, coal ₹8.5/kg, biomass briquette ₹8/kg. Boiler efficiency defaults to 85%.
- Default electricity options: DISCOM tariff ₹8.50/kWh at a grid factor of 0.716 kg CO₂/kWh; green open access ₹5.50/kWh; solar blocks with a thermal store ₹4.00/kWh. Contracted green electricity is treated as zero-emission on a market basis.
- Default scenario: 30 °C source, 85 °C delivery, 20 GWh-th a year of useful heat displacing piped natural gas on green open access, giving a 55 K lift, COP about 3.3, heat at about ₹1.67/kWh-th against ₹6.22 on gas, and about 4,400 t CO₂ avoided a year.
What it assumes
- No capital cost, integration work, retrofit sequencing or header assessment is included; those come from a site survey with portable heat metering.
- Electricity prices and fuel prices are indicative defaults; replace them with your tariff and your fuel contract.
- A heat pump on grid electricity cuts fuel cost but barely cuts carbon against gas at India's grid emission factor; the carbon case depends on the electricity it runs on.
Questions this page answers
How can a heat pump give more heat than the electricity it uses?
Where does the heat come from in a beverage plant?
Do we remove the boiler?
What COP should an industrial heat pump achieve?
Can a heat pump make steam?
Does a heat pump cut carbon?
What does the heat cost?
Is the result a quotation?
What it is telling you/ read this bit
Cheaper heat
is not cleaner heat.
A heat pump moves heat rather than making it, so what it costs depends on how far it has to move it. Raising delivery temperature or cooling the source both widen the lift and both cut the COP — which is why a recovered 45 °C stream is worth so much more than ambient air.
The physics keeps working above it; the machines, the refrigerants and the service network get much harder. Above roughly 120 °C we say so and the duty stays on fuel, or moves to solar thermal or electrode heat. A tool that promised otherwise would not be useful to you.
On the grid emission factor, a heat pump at COP 3 barely improves on gas for carbon while cutting the bill sharply. Put the same machine on contracted green electricity and its heat is close to zero-carbon. Switch the supply option above and watch the two bars move independently — electricity first, then heat.
No capital cost, no integration work, no retrofit sequencing, no assessment of whether your header can take it. Those come out of a site survey with portable heat metering on the loops that matter.
Next/ your loops
Meter the loop
before you size anything.
Most plants do not know their thermal baseline by duty. Four weeks of portable metering on jacket loops, HVAC reheat and water systems turns this estimate into a business case.