Your choices:
1 District cooling; 2 Biomass (solid); 3 Process heat
| What is your resource? | What do you want to deliver? | What is the service the customer wants? |
| Biomass (digestible sludge) | 1 District cooling | Comfortable indoor climate |
| Biomass (fermentable sludge) | District heating | Electricity |
| 2 Biomass (solid) | Electricity | Process cooling (< 0 °C) |
| Geothermal | Fuel: Gaseous | 3 Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C) |
| Sunshine | Fuel: Liquid | Process heat (150 - 1000 °C) |
| Water | Fuel: Solid | Process heat (> 1000 °C) |
| Wind | Local cooling (ind. house) | Transport |
| Residual oils/fats etc | Local heating (ind. house) |
Food manufacturing industries will – like dairies and others – but also several biotechnological industries often have a need for chilling or maintaining rooms or volumes at temperatures 5-15 °C.
It must be remembered that this type of customers may have an all-year-round need of cooling, so that the cooling production must run also on the coldest days when the need for district heating is at its peak. Since the cooling production will demand a bit of district heat to be used internally, this will have to be taken into consideration at the planning and dimensioning stage.
For the customer one main advantage with district cooling as compared to individual cooling is that the responsibility is handed over to a central, large-scale, production plant with 24-hour manning and professional personnel. Thus, the risk for breakages and the risk that the central AC-unit must suddenly be replaced at a high cost is minimised. The price paid is, of course, a fixed fee.
Another advantage for industrial customers is the possibility to use the fact that process heat – including chilling – is provided from renewable energy sources and thus to strengthen the green profile of the company's products.
To the customer, the primary source for the cooling production is irrelevant.