1 December 2026
Brussels, Belgium
#HPForum 2026
Award Ceremony
1 December 2026
SQUARE Brussels

Implementation of sustainable heat upgrade technologies for industry (“SPIRIT”)

Competing in the category:

Large Heat Pump Award
89133-2
Location: Belgium
Year of submission: 2026
Organisation: a. GEA Refrigeration Germany GmbH, Heating & Refrigeration Technologies, Berlin, Germany, b. Tiense Suikerraffinaderij N.V., Tienen, Belgium, c. Danish Technological Institute, Refrigeration and Heat Pump Technology, Aarhus, Denmark
Sector of application: Industrial
Funding from: Private, EU funds

In the energy-intensive sugar refining industry, juice concentration relies on multi-effect falling film evaporators traditionally driven by fossil fuel-fired steam boilers. Under the EU Horizon Europe project SPIRIT, a first-of-a-kind 4 MW high-temperature heat pump (HTHP) was developed by GEA and integrated into Tiense Suikerraffinaderij in Tienen, Belgium. The heat pump uses the natural refrigerant n-Pentane (R-601), which is a hydrocarbon with a GWP < 1, and recovers low-grade vacuum vapor at around 75 °C from the final evaporation effects and upgrades it into process steam at 115 °C - 140 °C (verified up to 150 °C) directly for the primary evaporation effect. Through demonstration in a real industrial environment the novel heat pump has proven the potential for enhancing energy efficiency and accelerating industrial decarbonization by using advanced heat pump solutions.

To our knowledge, this demonstrator represents the world’s largest demonstrated high-temperature heat pump running on pentane (R-601), which is lighthouse project in the heat pump community. Operating in a real-world food processing environment, the system delivers up to 4 MW of direct process steam at temperatures up to 150 °C. Generating multi-megawatt steam at these temperatures using this hydrocarbon has often been considered too complex or hazardous for industrial scale. This installation demonstrates that natural refrigerants can be deployed safely to replace fossil-fired boilers in the industry, and its paves the way for many future systems.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6opq5-K5fRE.

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