Recovering heat from wastewater

The Piranha is a compact wastewater heat recovery system that is said to offer both a strong commercial opportunity and reliable, renewable heat to medium-sized businesses and premises. It sits alongside the company's larger Sharc systems.

“I am confident that with the addition of Piranha to our offerings will be a key revenue driver and marks an important milestone in our sales and deployment strategy that will strengthen our first to market advantage in the UK and EU,” said SHARC group chief operating officer (UK) Russell Burton. “The Piranha represents a significant milestone for the SHARC technology in our market.”

The technology effectively recovers heat from the waste water we flush down the drain – an almost limitless resource that is typically discarded without a second thought, but which, according to SHARC Energy, can provide a significant proportion of the heat required for a large business, swimming pool complex or district heat network. 

SHARC systems are in action right across the world but, in Europe, have so far been limited to larger installations. With the European launch of SHARC’s compact Piranha system, sewage and wastewater heat recovery becomes available to a much wider range of premises.

Piranha is a self-contained system that intercepts wastewater and extracts the heat using a special heat exchanger and uses an in-built heat pump to return hot water to the building at around 60ºC. Piranha is quiet and efficient, with a typical Co-efficient of Performance (CoP) of around five. 

A Piranha, typically, can recover heat for hotels, nursing homes, student accommodation or apartment blocks.