Industrial Waste Heat Recovery: Companies, Startups & Research

General Electric Vernova, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Thermax and Alfa Laval are among the companies active in this field. Their work spans heat recovery steam generators, industrial boilers and heat-transfer equipment. Kanin Energy is also developing waste-heat-to-power projects, including a project announced for a Colorado gas plant in June 2026.

SIT Technologies is identified as a startup working on industrial waste heat recovery. Its research explores a Brayton-cycle high-temperature heat pump and its feasibility for industrial heat users. Kanin Energy has also announced commercial project and fundraising activity in 2026, although FACTS does not classify it as a startup.

Xi'an Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University and the University of Science and Technology Beijing are prominent research organizations in FACTS. Their work includes heat pumps for boiler flue gas, latent and thermochemical heat storage, and recovery from ash-laden exhaust. Tsinghua University and Northeastern University also research power cycles and thermoelectric conversion.

FACTS records $199.3 million in grants across 56 awards since 2020. This grant figure is the clearest funding measure provided for the field. The listed funding-round data contains transactions unrelated to industrial waste heat recovery, so its aggregate should not be treated as a reliable sector investment total.

General Electric Vernova leads the listed patent holders with 17 patents. GE Infrastructure Technology LLC follows with 9, while Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie has 7. The listed holders also include China Wuhuan Engineering, Toshiba Corporation and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Patent activity declined 35.9% in the last-12-month comparison, while publications grew 10.2%. FACTS records 192 patents in the 24-month window. This contrast suggests that recent research activity is increasing even as patenting has slowed; it does not establish whether the underlying technology market is expanding or contracting.

Recent developments include a magnesium–rare-earth alloy reactor for thermochemical storage, published in October 2026, and work on combining thermal storage with Organic Rankine Cycles to handle fluctuating heat. In September 2026, Kanin Energy announced a $100 million fundraise, and in June 2026 it announced plans for a 7 MW waste-heat-to-power project.

The main approaches are heat exchangers and preheating, steam generation, power cycles, heat pumps, thermoelectric conversion and thermal energy storage. Heat exchangers and boilers transfer heat directly; cycles and thermoelectrics produce electricity; heat pumps raise heat to a useful temperature. Storage shifts recovered heat to a later time, helping manage mismatches between supply and demand.

FACTS identifies applications in steel and metals; cement, glass and ceramics; refining and petrochemicals; chemical manufacturing; food and beverage; and district heating. These settings can use recovered heat for process heating or steam, or convert it to electricity. The right approach depends on the heat source and the facility’s available demand.

The United States leads the listed country activity with 3,471 documents, followed by China with 2,781. The United Kingdom, Germany and Japan are also prominent. These figures describe document activity in FACTS, not installed capacity or commercial deployment, and research and patent activity can differ between countries.