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The Horizon Europe Project INFERNO

Press Releases 2025

Sustainable Energy Harvesting from Industrial Waste Heat: A novel hybrid technology for electricity generation

Energy-intensive, high-temperature processing industries lose more than 50% of their energy as waste heat during the production, amounting to approximately 400 TWh of power per year in Europe. Many technologies are available to convert waste heat into electricity, there is however a lack of adoption of these solutions at industrial scale. Specific barriers such as the efficiency and cost of these renewable technologies and the difficulty of integrating these systems into production lines limit their widespread adoption as heat recovery technologies in the industry.

INFERNO aims at developing a new hybrid platform system based on the integration of thermophotovoltaics (TPV), metasurface collector (MetaS) and thermoelectric generators (TEG), which will eventually contribute to a breakthrough in sustainable energy harvesting from industrial waste heat, helping hard-to-decarbonise industries improve their system efficiency. Ultimately, INFERNO promises to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

To accomplish the project's ultimate goal, expertise in materials research, modelling, cell fabrication, thermoelectricity, and electronics is merged in a pan-European scale. The INFERNO consortium includes six professional partners from three European countries: Ireland, France and Germany: Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork, Technology University Dublin, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg, Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden, Université de Technologie de Troyes and F6S Innovation in Dublin.

At IFW Dresden, an economically feasible and large-scale fabrication process of high-performance thermoelectric materials on specified substrates will be developed, and a thermoelectric generator (TEG) device made of earth-abundant materials will be fabricated to achieve the targeted efficiency and output power density to be integrated in the hybrid system.

Funded by the European Union.

Further information about INFERNO:
https://infernoproject.eu/
Project 101160642 — INFERNO

Contact at IFW Dresden:
Prof. Dr. Kornelius Nielsch
Mail: k.nielsch[at]ifw-dresden.de
Phone: +49 (0) 351 - 4659 104

Picture of Prof. Kornelius Nielsch and his quote:“In INFERNO, we will develop a thermoelectric generator focusing on the development of high-performance thermoelectric materials, particularly the less expensive and more common on earth.”