Meccanica Magazine n. 4

meccanica magazine
80
ENG
DESTINY Project: Development of an Efficient Microwave System
for Material Transformation in energy INtensive processes for an
improved Yield
IManufacturing is the driving force behind Europe’s economy,
providing over €6,553 billion of GDP, representing approximately
21% of the EU GDP and providing about 20% of all jobs (more than
30 million) in 25 different industrial sectors. Within a context of
climate change legislation, volatile energy prices, and increased
environmental awareness, manufacturing has to focus on the
introduction of modern and renewable energy solutions as well as
on sustainability and eco-efficiency.
The EU-funded DESTINY project aims at contributing to move
manufacturing firmly forward in tackling the current energyrelated
issues by realizing a functional, green and energy saving,
scalable and replicable solution, exploiting microwave technology
for continuous material processing in energy intensive industries
(ceramics, steel, cement). The DESTINY module, a container-sized,
fully electrical, high-temperature processing system, will reduce
the direct dependence of these energy intensive industries on fossil
fuels by:
- Allowing for a -30% to +30% energy input within renewable energy
sources (RES) fluctuations timeframes, without significant losses in
specific energy efficiency;
- Improving energy efficiency by 30%;
- Improving resource efficiency by 30%;
- Decreasing CO2 emissions by 40%;
- Decreasing OPEX and CAPEX by 15%.
Despite very demanding, these objectives are necessary to help
laying the basis for a greener future.
The project started in 2018 and will end in March 2023. During
these years the Consortium (15 partners from Spain, Italy, Austria,
Greece, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland) has worked to develop
all the technical solutions necessary to guarantee the continuous
processsing of granular feedstock through microwave (MW) heating.
Indeed, MW heating is a well-established heating technology for
many industrial sectors with low-temperature processes (i.e. drying)
and low power demand. As for high-temperature processing...
completely different story. MW heating has a number of drabacks
in these applications: limited knowledge about MW-material
interaction at high temperatures on continuous processes, process
thermal runaways, changes in the material’s behaviour that have to
be managed, continuous process limitations, difficulties in reliably
measuring temperature (the chemical reactions driver) of the
materials being processed.
Several members of the project consortium have already faced these
difficulties. Within the European project DAPhNE (‘Development of
adaptive ProductioN systems for Eco-efficient firing Processes’ -
FoF.NMP.2012-1 / GA No. 314636), they successfully demonstrated a
disruptive first milestone in processing high temperature materials
using microwave technology. The DAPhNE project was distinguished
by the EC as a flagship project and was one of the TOP 3 projects
(out of about 150 applicants) in the German Sustainability Award
2016, category R&D. DAPhNE demonstrated the first worldwide
continuous high-temperature MW production of ceramic frits
(main component of the glaze coat on top of ceramic tiles), glass
and clinker (main pre-product for cement). In addition, the energy
consumption of the small pilot system developed during the DAPhNE
project has shown very promising (50 % and higher energy savings
in comparison with small systems of the same size exploiting gas
burners).
The lesson learnt from DAPhNE has made it possible to boost
technolgoy update and transfer to process intensification grounding
on reaction speed, selective heating and flexibility adapted to the
production. Indeed, DESTINY targets a production of 20kg/h
(scalable to higher rates when using array of modules) enabling
commercial (pilot) production of special and novel products.
After three intensive years of technical developments, trials
(and COVID-related restrictions) finally DESTINY reached the
demonstration phase. In fact, this phase has just started at the
KERABEN GRUPO SA (Project Coordinator) premises.
Polytechnic of Milan (POLIMI) is currently involved in the project as
supporting partner (third-party “in-kind contribution” Art. 11 GA) of
Univeristy Polythecnic of Marche (UNIVPM) – DESTINY consortium
member - in the development of two monitoring systems acting
at MW-furnace and process levels resepctively. As standard
temperature measurement systems cannot be exploited for
monitoring the temperature evolution of the raw materials being
processed in the furnace, because of the interactions with the
MW field, the teams of POLIMI, led by Prof. Paolo Chiariotti, and
UNIVPM, led by Prof. Gian Marco Revel, are developing an AI-based