The Hepworth Brewery in Sussex is trialling a novel heat pump that its developer claims can reduce carbon emissions by up to 90%.
Hepworth is the first business to trial the Greensteam heat pump developed by Surbiton-based startup Futraheat.
The pump can produce steam up to 130°C, supporting the brewing process; traditional heat pumps can typically deliver hot water up to about 80°C, sufficient for home heating but not industrial use.
Futraheat’s Greensteam heat pump recycles waste water vapour from the brewing process and runs on a green electricity tariff. It uses a novel, patented turbo compressor known as ‘TurboClaw’. In 2023, the startup received £2 million investment from backers including the Clean Growth Fund to develop and deploy a heat pump capable of reaching 150°C, incorporating two TurboClaw compressors.
The Hepworth Brewery project is being delivered in partnership with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA) programme, managed by the Carbon Trust. The aim of the initiative is to support partnerships between developers of innovative technologies and industrial companies will to trial them.
The independent brewery said that the new heat pump would reduce its energy consumption associated with wort boiling, lowering fuel costs by up to 40%, with a potential to roll out the technology across the whole brewing process.
Hepworth Brewery chairman Andy Hepworth said the initiative “demonstrates how Hepworth Brewery can adopt innovative technology to switch off our oil boiler and use a reliable new way to recycle our waste heat with minimal emissions”.
Around 70% of all UK industrial energy demand is for heat, which could be delivered via high-temperature heat pumps.
Futraheat CEO Tom Taylor pointed out: “Heat is a major component of a huge range of industrial processes, from pharmaceuticals to food and drink, and vast amounts of this is delivered by steam.
“Until now, heat pumps have been both unaffordable and unable to deliver heat at the temperature that industry requires. This project demonstrates the technology can now be implemented within a brewery.”
Decarbonising industrial heat
Heavy industry is a key area of concern in the decarbonisation process, given that in many cases cleaner alternatives are not up to the task. Funding is, as a result, focused on novel ways to replace fossil fuel in processes such as brewing.
Recently, deep-tech climate investor Zero Carbon Capital led a £1 million pre-seed funding round for Exergy3, which was spun out from the University of Edinburgh last year and offers modular thermal energy storage systems that convert green electricity into heat.
What sets the technology apart is the temperature at which the energy is stored, reaching peaks of 1300°C, being supplied as hot gas for industrial and thermal processes.
The Carbon Trust recently hit a milestone in another of its efforts to funnel funding into industrial decarbonisation efforts. The Clean Hydrogen Innovation Programme (CHIP) launched its first three projects which it said address critical challenges within the clean hydrogen supply chain—broadly what the CHIP initiative was established, in 2023, to address.
It focuses on the production of hydrogen from ‘clean’ or green renewable sources and looks at the carbon footprint across the supply chain from production through to offtake.
As explored in a recent blog, where green hydrogen is applied will be crucial. Too much time on future-focused projects diverts from the area that should be of the highest priority: those industries already using hydrogen.
