Abstract: A process and an apparatus for recovering heat from a finely to coarsely divided hot material, such as carbide crushed on solidification, which contains particles and lumps of varying sizes. The hot material is separated by a classifier into a portion of lumps and a portion of particles, and the lump portion is cooled in a cooling bunker with a stream of cooling gas while the particulate portion is cooled in another cooling unit with a stream of cooling gas. The hot cooling gas resulting from the cooling is fed to a heat exchanger in which the gas is subjected to heat exchange with a working fluid for a turbine coupled to a power generator or the like. The heat exchanger is connected to the cooling bunker and unit by a closed circulating channel.