Refrigeration of nuggets will heat up half a small town

The cooling processes at Danpo’s factory in the town Farre emit enough excess heat to cover half of the consumption at the heating cooperative Give Fjernvarme and make the production of chicken products greener.

If you like sinking your teeth into crispy nuggets or hot wings from Danish chickens, you will probably come across products from Danpo’s factory in Farre. For instance, the nuggets from McDonald’s restaurants in Denmark are produced here. Each week, the factory produces 1,000 tons of chicken products of which the majority are frozen down immediately after being processed. This represents an untapped resource as the strong cooling processes related to the refrigeration emit large amounts of heat.

Danpo and Give Fjernvarme spotted an opportunity for a valuable sector coupling where excess heat can be used the best way possible by being channelled to the district heating customers. Artelia was full-service consultant on the project and started by producing a project proposal to account for the socio-economic gain and the green potential. The analysis clearly showed that the economy is very good, not to mention the sustainable aspect, says Kenneth Graa :

We can reduce Give Fjernvarme’s wood chip consumption by more thank 50% and remove the need for natural gas completely. Additionally, the town of Farre can be connected to the district heating network instead of being heated with natural gas and oil.

Kenneth Graa Business Manager Energy & Industry Aarhus

Great savings for both parties

Give Fjernvarme supplies heat to 1,600 customers who can look forward to competitive and even greener heat supply. The new solution will also benefit Danpo :

The heat that the cooling process emits must be channelled away to keep the temperature at minus 20 degrees, and that requires a great deal of energy. There is therefore a lot of synergy in the project since Danpo is able to save significant amounts of electricity for the cooling towers by emitting the excess heat to Give Fjernvarme. It is a win-win situation for all parties, says Kenneth.

The technical solution consists of a 5 MW power-operated heat pump which receives hot water from the cooling towers and via a heat exchanger sends the water to the district heating system at the right temperature. In that connection, a 3.6 km long heat transmission line to Give Fjernvarme will be established.

Artelia will be responsible for the heat pump procurement based on operational needs as well as project design and tender procedure for the district heating main. During the preliminary phases, we have screened for the amount of excess heat by analysing operational data for Danpo’s cooling equipment. Based on that, energy system calculations have been made for Give Fjernvarme’s future heat production system by using the modelling tool energyPRO.