Eyeing Industrial Excess for Home Heating in the U.K.

The steel factories of Sheffield, England, pay a lot of money to cool down the water and gases they get rid of at the end of their manufacturing processes. At the same time, the people of Sheffield pay a lot of money to heat their homes up in a part of England that has average winter temperatures in the mid 30s. Researchers are now eying a two-birds, one-stone solution: redirecting some of that wasted heat from the factories into the town's heating system, which would reduce costs on both sides and help bring down the city's overall carbon emissions.

It's a method that could be used and expanded to provide for about 20 percent of the U.K.'s entire heating needs, according to researchers at the University of Sheffield's Faculty of Engineering. In an article recently published in the journal Energy Conversion and Management, the researchers show that simply redirecting the heat form these factories could provide heating for about 2,000 homes in the city.