Measurement and verification methodology for an industrial waste heat recovery project in the mining industry

A typical mine has a large workforce that does the physical labour of mining gold and these workers need to cleanse themselves and their apparel after each shift. This creates a large demand for hot water. By using calorifiers that has the storage and heating capacity to cope with the large amounts of hot water needed, the cleansing requirements are satisfied. Calorifiers use resistance heating elements that have a very high demand for electrical energy. To lessen the demand for electrical energy by the resistance heaters, waste heat can be utilised. For this case study waste heat from a compressor system was used to increase the inlet temperature of the water to the calorifiers. Measurement and Verification (M&V) is needed to determine, quantify and verify the impact of these projects on energy use for the stakeholders. M&V should be an independent, impartial party that provide answers to questions such as: · What was actually done/installed during the DSM project? · What was the actual impact of the DSM project? In order to answer these questions a methodology was developed that complied with the SANS 50 010 and IPMVP requirements. This paper will focus on the M&V methodology that was developed to evaluate the performance of an industrial waste heat recovery project at a mine. The actual results of a case study will also be presented in in this paper.