About the project
Potato chips are known to most as a tasty but high-calorie snack. What most people don’t know is that making potato chips is also very energy-intensive. The water from the potatoes must be almost completely evaporated during frying, with the heat coming from fossil boilers. For the 1.9 million tonnes of potato chips produced in Europe in 2020, a total of 4.37 million tonnes of CO2 released into the atmosphere.
In order to reduce these emissions, snack manufacturer Lorenz-Bahlsen has joined forces with the fryer manufacturer Rosenqvists, the turbomachinery manufacturer TTI and the DLR Institute for CO2-poor industrial processes to form a project within the framework of the CET partnership. Over the next few years, the project partners will install and test a waste heat boiler in a crisp fryer at Lorenz’s plant in Stanowice, Poland. This heat exchanger will make it possible to generate low-pressure steam from the fryer’s exhaust gases. At the same time, TTI and DLR will develop steam compressors that will be qualified in a test bench setup. These two proof-of-principle test campaigns will develop a virtual design for a complete high-temperature heat pump that raises the heat to the temperatures required for the frying process, demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of the approach.
