Analisi di metodologie per il calcolo della domanda termica industriale e applicazione al caso italiano = Analysis of methodologies for the calculation of industrial thermal demand and application to the Italian case

One of the main challenges of the 21st century is certainly the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (in particular CO2); to achieve this, the decarbonisation of the energy system is necessary. In Italy in 2018 the industrial sector accounts for the 21% of the total final energy consumption (ENEA, 2020) equal to 24,2 Mtoe, with 406,3 ktoe coming from renewable sources (1,7% of the industrial energy consumption). A key point is to establish how this energy is used, in particular the share that is used for heat production and the temperature levels of it. To date, the decarbonization of the industry is mainly based on the electrification of production processes, which combined with the production of electricity through renewable technologies such as photovoltaic and wind power, allow to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. However, this strategy has several limitations, linked both to the renewable sources used and to the production processes to be decarbonised. A first problem is linked to the discontinuous production of energy from renewable technologies such as photovoltaics, due to meteorological, geographical and seasonal conditions. There are processes that require large amounts of thermal energy at high temperatures; then the high-temperature heat demand can be a limit to the industrial thermal processes decarbonisation with classical renewable energy sources such as geothermal energy or (non-concentrating) solar thermal, which cannot provide thermal energy at the required temperatures. An example is the steel production, for which temperatures above 1500° are required inside the blast furnace. In this process coke is generally used, which performs two fundamental tasks: in addition to providing the necessary heat, it serves to reduce the raw mineral used to produce cast iron. This poses a further problem for the replacement of fossil fuel. Therefore, specific information on required temperature levels is of the essence. The purpose of this thesis is the evaluation of the industrial thermal energy demand in Italy; in particular, thermal energy consumptions of the different sectors and the associated temperature levels will be calculated. The assessment of the thermal energy demand of the Italian industrial sector is based on methodologies illustrated by (Naegler et al., 2015). The study aims to estimate the final industrial thermal energy demand for all member states of the European Union using 2 calculation approaches based on different datasets, which allow to evaluate the thermal demand divided by different temperature ranges. Both approaches are based on thermal energy consumption data in German industry sectors: therefore, the hypothesis behind the evaluation is that the estimates for the share of thermal energy for the different sectors and temperature levels are equal (or at least comparable) to those found in Italian industry. After this first part, an in-depth analysis follows on those sectors that are among the most energy-intensive in the Italian industry, such as the steel, cement, paper and chemical sector, starting from the aggregate thermal consumption of the sector and then moving on to an estimate of consumption for the individual plants.