An enormous amount of energy is wasted every year from heat sources such as engine exhausts, commercial ovens, industrial furnaces and landfill flares. Labs around the world are seeking ways to capture this excess heat before it disappears into the atmosphere.

According to the U.S. Clean Heat and Power Association, a variety of industrial waste energy streams can be recycled into useful heat and power. These include hot exhaust gases, low-grade fuels such as methane emissions from landfills and high-pressure steam and gas. Proven technology can profitably convert the energy in hot exhaust (600 degrees F or higher) from any process into steam that drives turbine generators and produces electricity. Coke ovens, glass furnaces, silicon production, refineries, natural gas pipeline compressors, petrochemical processes, and many processes in the metals industry vent hot exhaust that can be profitably recycled to produce fuel-free power.

More and more, devices known as combined heat and power (CHP) technologies are installed to recover heat that would normally be wasted and use it to produce both steam and electricity. Currently, CHP systems produce almost 8 percent of U.S. electric power; save building and industry owners over $5 billion per year in energy costs; decrease energy use by almost 1.3 trillion BTUs per year; reduce NOx emissions by 0.4 million tons per year; reduce SO2 emissions by over 0.9 million tons per year; and prevent the release of over 35 million metric tons of carbon equivalent into the atmosphere.

One CHP maker, Cyclone Power Technologies Inc., Pompano Beach, Fla., will soon offer its Waste Heat Engine—a modern-day steam engine—that can capture wasted heat from various sources and convert it into between 1kW and 1MW of electricity. “We believe that our WHE systems can fill an enormous gap in the waste energy recovery industry—namely small and medium sized businesses with low to medium quality excess wasted heat,” says Cyclone’s CEO, Harry Schoell.

Cyclone believes that the installation of its WHE systems can also help drive investment and create jobs. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, if the U.S. were to increase its use of CHP and waste heat recovery systems to generate 20 percent of its electricity by 2030, it would spur $234 billion in private investment and create 1 million jobs.