I've never used the batch mode so far but I managed to take your workflow, reset the heatmap node, select an appropriate path to save the image to and run it in batch mode.
./Knime -nosplash -application org.knime.product.KNIME_BATCH_APPLICATION -workflowDir="/......../workspaces/ws_2.9/open issues/workflow_batch/"
INFO main BatchExecutor ===== Executing workflow /........../workspaces/ws_2.9/open issues/workflow_batch =====
2014-05-08 13:45:21.355 Knime[61785:903] Process manager already initialized -- can't fully enable headless mode.
INFO main BatchExecutor Workflow execution done Finished in 3 secs (3659ms)
INFO main BatchExecutor ============= Workflow executed sucessfully ===============
I checked the destination location and the image has been saved. It seems everything worked.
So I don't know what's going wrong in your case or if I did something different to what you did. Do you have any error-messages or anything one can use to troubleshoot a bit more?
That is so weird. I don't get any error messeges it just doens't execute but I'll have to give it some more trying. At least I know I'm doing something wrong :D