Arc Metal have been a partner in a KTP-project during the second half of 2021. KTP is an abbreviation for “Knowledge Transfer Partnership”. This is a collaboration program for university and industry with the ambition to share knowledge and experiences and help new engineers on the job market.
From August 2021 to February 2022 Tobias Holmqvist was employed by the university as project manager for the current project. He has spent his full time on site at Arc Metal.
The purpose with the current project has been to investigate the possibilities to increase the amount of recycled energy from the furnaces. Already before Arc Metal is selling excess energy to the local energy provider to heat the surrounding buildings at the industrial area. Work have earlier been done to increase that amount with public funding. This project had the goal to take the next step and investigate the conditions for even more energy recycling.
The result show that it is possible to increase the amount of recycled energy. Already during this project some minor adjustments have been done to recover more energy and improve process stability. A larger amount of recovered energy needs larger investments mostly outside Arc Metals own equipment. One problem is that the delivered water has to low temperature to fit the normal central heating system.
In the project there have been an academic coach, Jan Akander, senior lecturer in Energy systems from University of Gävle. Project coordinator has been Joakim Helmbrant, also from University of Gävle. Arc Metal see this as a start of a relationship with University of Gävle and hope to continue to contribute to research in recycling low grade heat and other relevant topics.
The project ended in February and Tobias was then employed by Arc Metal as a construction engineer.
Read more about the project on the university homepage (Swedish): Link