DryFiciency is a four-year SPIRE PPP and Horizon 2020 funded project on the topic of energy efficiency which began in September 2016. The project brings together 13 partners from six European countries and will contribute to high energy efficiency and a reduction of fossil carbon emissions in Europe by means of waste heat recovery using an innovative heat pump system. DryFiciency project focuses on the innovation and demonstration of industrial drying and dehydration heat pump technologies. The key elements of the solution are two advanced, high temperature vapour compression heat pumps: a closed loop heat pump for air drying processes and an open loop heat pump for steam driven drying processes. Within the project, demonstration plants will be built to validate the technology at production sites of the DryFiciency industrial partners Agrana Stärke (Austria), Wienerberger (Austria) and MARS (Germany). Demonstration events will take place at these sites to promote the technology replication and uptake in other relevant European energy-intensive sectors. In November 2017, the open loop heat pump was installed in the SINTEF Energy Lab in order to investigate the 2 stage turbo-compression in steam cycles. The installation is the joint effort of SINTEF, Epcon and Rotrex and is specifically designed for the superheated steam drying process used at MARS Petcare in Germany. The first successful system tests were performed at the end of 2017 and the further work will focus on operation stability as well as effective start up procedure of the high temperature heat pump. To see this working installation was one of the reasons for the 3rd consortium meeting - hosted by SINTEF in Norway. Additionally, partners participated in a business model development workshop moderated by RTDS Group to facilitate the adoption of "entrepreneurial mindset" as a first step to develop business plans and agreements for use and commercialization of project results. Topics as potential revenues and customer segments, value propositions, key resources, channels and key activities were addressed and preliminarily answered. It goes without saying that partners are looking forward to collaborative efforts in the upcoming three years. The consortium will meet twice in 2018 and will attend several events in Europe. If you support DryFiciency, consider following project news by signing up to our newsletter and following us on Twitter.