What is a thermodynamic machine?
Gilles David: An air conditioner is a thermodynamic machine! To give another example, a thermal power plant is built around a turbine and a thermodynamic cycle. Thermodynamics, It is the science that studies the relationships between thermal (heat/cold) and mechanical (work) phenomena.originally engines, steam turbines or air conditioners.
What technologies are your machines based on?
GD: Enertime is based on two technologies. On one side, orc machines (organic Rankine cycle machines), that is, thermodynamic machines that generate electrical energy from high-temperature thermal sources. They have applications in geothermal energy, biomass and industrial energy efficiency. We have also applied this know-how to expansion gas turbines. On the other hand, we have developed heat pumps : machines that generate heat with electricity and a cooler source.
Charles Huguet: We sell this equipment to large manufacturers or electricians. Each of our machines weighs several tens of tons. A turbine weighs from 3 to 5 tons! Our production is 100% French : Turbomachines are assembled in Courbevoie, the rest are manufactured in mainly French factories, by our subcontractors. Our equipment is then installed in factories in France or abroad (China, Thailand, Mexico, Ukraine or Bulgaria). Our ambition is to massively export this technology to the whole world.
How do you stand out from your competitors?
GD: We are one of the few French companies that has developed technology on an international scale in the field of energy transition. Furthermore, Enertime is a completely independent company. It is true that it is publicly traded, but we do not have major industrial shareholders or investment funds in our capital. On the R&D side, we are constantly investing to improve our machines, in particular thanks to European funding. Our expertise in mechanics and thermodynamics also allows us to develop new energy-related technologies.
CH: At the same time, in the last two years we have developed an offer dedicated to French and European manufacturers. It took the form of an energy efficiency subsidiary, called Énergie Circulaire. It’s a service offering: instead of selling our technologies to our industrial customers, we finance them ourselves to install them in factories. In this way, we provide our clients with carbon-free energy, resulting from the recovery of their own effluents.
How do you help your customers achieve energy efficiency?
CH: Our machines essentially save electricity or natural gas. Once installed in a factory, an ORC machine recovers waste heat (generated by a process, without it being the main purpose) make electricity. This solution is very interesting, given the current increase in the price of electricity. Our subsidiary Circular Energy focuses on this type of machine and its application. It intends to offer an equivalent model in heat pumps in the very near future, replacing natural gas boilers.
As such, we are also in the process of negotiating four large projects related to the France Relance plan. They come inside the frame ADEME calls for energy efficiency projectsfor contract amounts between 5 and 13 million euros.
Can you tell us more about these projects?
CH: One of them is more advanced than the others and it is a glass factory in Verallia. The objective is to recover the fatal heat from a glass furnace to generate electricity, which will then supply the entire factory. Thus, you will see your electricity consumption drop significantly, since part of it will be produced by our machines.
The principle remains the same for three other projects, which would respectively bring together companies specialized in zinc recycling, ferroalloy production and cement production. If these projects come to light, ORC machines will be installed in these three companies to recover the heat left by the fumes from the factories. It will then be transformed into electricity to supply these factories.
Let us add that these other three projects each have a specificity. For example, one is part of an industrial heat network project. Another would allow the plant to become 100% autonomous in your electricity consumption thanks to us. Finally, the latest project would allow the client, installed at the end of the electrical network, to also improve the quality of its electrical supply.
How do you envision your industry? Will it evolve?
GD: Until 2019, our market was not very buoyant in France. The economic and technological interest of a company like ours was not well understood by public authorities and industrialists. At that time, electricity was plentiful and cheap, so there was no point in saving it.. In fact, today there is a paradigm shift.
Consequently, our technologies will develop. They became aware of the interest of sobriety, its industrial translation and energy efficiency, even in electrical matters. This is valid for our ORC machines, but also for our gas-saving heat pumps. This responds to a strong demand from our customers for innovation to decarbonise their processes, while having a positive economic impact.
What do you expect for the future of Enertime?
CH: Enertime is positioned as a leader in a sector of French industrialists. We hope that it will become a sector of excellence, a generator of employment and an actor in reindustrialization, just like hydrogen or other large areas of activity. In France, a dozen players work on heat recovery. Enertime is a bit of a pioneer. We position ourselves as the “big brother”, the spokesperson for this necessary path.
However, we are facing a very current problem: that of hiring. We struggle to find qualified technical profiles for industrial positions. However, it is important to understand that French industry is not dead. It benefits from the support of the Government, and it will even recover with these issues of energy, energy saving and green energy production.
GD: Also, the world revolves thanks to mechanics and thermodynamics, and in France, the country where Carnot was born, we are well placed to know that. Enertime has the necessary resources to become a kind of Alstom of the 21st century, that is, an industrial company in the field of energy, mastering advanced technologies and marketing them worldwide.
This content was produced with SCRIBEO. The BFMBUSINESS editorial team was not involved in the production of this content.
Source: BFM TV
