Heating without emissions

At Tollerort in the Port of Hamburg exhaust heat from a sewage treatment plant provides the heating: with this clever solution HHLA and HAMBURG WATER reduce costs and save 1,000 tons of climatically harmful CO2.

Ingenious cooperation between HHLA and HAMBURG WASSER stems from the proximity of a sewage treatment plant and a container terminal in the Port of Hamburg. The new office building at HHLA Container Terminal Tollerort is heated by previously unused surplus heat from the Köhlbrandhöft sewage treatment plant. This produces advantages for both partners: The exhaust heat from the sewage treatment plant is used to good pur-pose and boosts the utilization rate of the energy generated by the plant, while the exhaust heat is also cheaper than other energy sources.

District heating offers not just economic advantages, but also distinct ecological benefits. Fossil fuels that would normally be required for producing the 2 million kilowatt hours of energy required at Tollerort are saved. Emissions from burning these would have totalled around 1,000 tons of the greenhouse gas CO2, so that district heating also benefits the climate.

Klaus-Dieter Peters, HHLA executive board chairman, commented: “When expanding our terminals we are constantly on the look-out for ways of introducing sustained technologies and processes. In utilizing exhaust heat from Köhlbrandhöft sewage treatment plant, we are making an intelligent contribution to climate protection.”

“Today, we already cover the sewage treatment plant's energy needs for  sixty percent with energy gained from the sewage process itself. Due to  the heat supply installed in Container Terminal Tollerort, we can use the  sewage sludge even more efficiently”, adds Dr. Michael Beckereit, CEO of HAMBURG WASSER.

HAMBURG WASSER and HHLA received part of the finance for building the 1.5-km hot water pipes and emission-free heating of the CTT building from the Hamburg Ministry of Urban Development and the Environment (BSU) under the Hamburg Senate (state gov-ernment) programme “Companies conserving resources”.
 

(Source: transport Weekly)