Industry Solutions

1. PAPER:

Introduction Energy Management has become crucial to the competitors of the paper industry. Rising material and fuel costs coupled with increased global competition is forcing paper mills to slash energy costs. Utility management therefore assumes significant importance in a paper mill.

There is tremendous potential to save energy of every kind in an average paper plant irrespective of its size. A 20% reduction in steam consumption for a 50 TPH plant saves USD 127000, equivalent to producing 150 tons of extra paper.

The paper manufacturing process involves use of utilities like steam, compressed air, electrical power and large quantity of water to a varying degree depending upon the raw material used.

Fuel savings in the Steam Generation Process Generation of steam or compressed air is at a central location and fuel/power savings can easily be affected by one or all the following steps:

• Flow Measurement of inputs/outputs with an Accuflo Flowmeter
• Combustion Control for Optimum Efficiency with an Effimax Package
• Effective cooling of compressed air at compressor outlet

Utilization of Steam and Air There are many locations from where leaks to the atmosphere cause heavy losses if not attended to in time. While steam losses are visible, compressed air losses are invisible and are likely to go unnoticed. Use of steam and compressed air in the process should be made with proper pressure and temperature control with right type of equipment. Following points should hereby be regarded:

• Metering of steam to De-aerator
• Provision of Pumping Traps on evaporators
• Use of correct traps on radiator coils in Air heaters
• Use of special Sight Glasses on drying cylinders
• Use of System Unit on drying cylinders
• Use of steam drains on Digester Preheaters

Paper Machine Cascade System: Ordinary sight glasses provided in cascading systems, fail frequently due to mechanical breakages and fogging of glass surface. Specially developed glasses eliminate this problem with use of toughened glass, swirl chamber design and use of asbestos free gaskets.

Condensate Recovery in the Paper Industry
Condensate available from the process is a high value source of energy savings as it has useful heat energy apart from being the ideal boiler feed water if returned to boiler. In a paper plant there are various areas of possible condensate contamination – Recovery Area being the major one – and the modern techniques provide means to check condensate quality on continuous basis.

Digester Preheater
Considerable amount of steam is consumed in preheating black liquor circulated in chemical pulping. Lack of suitable drains and related accessories on condensate removal line allows large quantity of live steam to leak into condensate space. This not only results in loss of energy but also pressurizes condensate return lines creating water hammer conditions. Further, use of electrical pump to pump condensate back requires diluting this condensate with cooling water with loss of substantial thermal energy.

Condensate Purity Checks:
Sampling of condensate coming out of individual preheaters rather than doing it near the condensate tank after collecting from all preheaters prevents potential loss from “good” preheaters whenever such contamination is detected. Condensate Contamination Detection System (CCDS) is the system designed to recover reusable condensate and drain the unwanted condensate.

Evaporator Condensate Drainage
Equipment usually working under vacuum conditions are difficult to drain as it calls for elaborate water seals to maintain the required vacuum. A steam driven condensate pump works as a pumping trap in such cases serving the function of both – a trap and a pump – to effectively drain out the condensate from evaporator bodies.

2. Oil and Gas:

Introduction
Steam is used in Petrochemical and Refinery complex as the major source of heat. These plants usually have captive power plants to generate electrical power from high pressure steam (HP) in boilers. The extraction steam from Back-pressure turbines then provides the low pressure steam (LP) for process use. The use of steam can be categorized under the following headings:

Steam for Power
HP superheated steam is used in power turbines and drive turbines to generate electrical power and drive equipment like pumps, fans and compressors. It is also used in Ejectors for vacuum conditions.

Steam for Process
LP saturated steam is used in process equipment like Reaction vessels, Re-boilers, Fractionating towers, Distillation columns and Heat-exchangers.

Steam for Tracing
LP saturated steam is also used to maintain temperature of various products in Storage tanks, distribution pipelines and pumps. This steam is also used in product loading/unloading areas for maintaining products at pumping temperature.

Thermo-compressors
Thermo-compressors or steam jet compressors are used in a wide range of processes to save energy by recovering low pressure flash steam. They compress low pressure steam to usable pressure levels and thereby reclaim the heat energy in the low pressure steam, which would have been wasted. The low pressure steam is entrained by the Thermo-compressor and compressed to a reusable pressure, where it can be effectively utilized for its heat or thermal value.

Steam is the preferred medium of heat transfer in a number of petrochemical drying and distilling processes. Recovery of low pressure steam from turbine exhaust and condensate flash steam recovery from heat exchangers make Thermo-compressors effective energy savers.

Advantages of the Thermo-compressors:
- No moving parts therefore very little maintenance required
- Easy installation
- Insensitive to Fouling
- Low in initial capital cost giving attractive returns on investment
- Long operational life

Baby Thermo-compressor
The Baby Thermo-compressor is a complete packaged unit that is easy to install and operate. Baby Thermo-compressor is an extremely cost effective solution to reclaim low pressure flash steam that otherwise would have been vented.

The Baby Thermo-compressor package is a skid mounted system comprising of Thermo-compressors,Control Valves and other accurate products.

3. Beverages:

Introduction
During the brewing process, complex chemical reactions take place that convert malt, hops, water and yeast into beer. Steam is essential in this process for heating, cleaning and pasteurization process.

To produce high quality beer while maintaining low production costs it is necessary that the brewing processes are operated as efficiently as possible, effectively using the heat available in the steam. To achieve this, it is necessary to consider the design and operation of the complete steam and condensate system, taking into account the types of processes, their individual requirements, the local environment and the types of beer being brewed. Steam demand is not constant and sudden peak demands for steam in a brewery can lead to priming or carryover from the boilers, with wet steam passing into the distribution system.

The boiler should be operated at the highest possible rated pressure to provide a degree of thermal storage, helping to cope with sudden high steam demands. Steam pressure can then be reduced to the required operation pressures by using Forbes Marshall Pressure Reducing Stations.

Thermal storage can be further increased by specifying a larger than normal boiler shell or introducing a steam accumulator. An accumulator stores thermal energy under light load and supplements steam flow to the brewery during sudden high loads. This will protect the boiler from the effects of overload conditions, allow them to fire to the average load and ensure that a high sudden steam demand is met.

Steam Utilization in brewing process
A large proportion of steam produced in a brewery is used to help in the extraction of sugars and flavours in the mashing process and worth boiling where the beer is sterilized and stabilized. These two processes alone can account for up to 50% of the connected steam load.

Steam is used to provide the heat for pasteurization, for production of hot liquor, for bottle washing, in the racking, bottling and canning processes and in the CIP systems. In addition to the process requirements steam will often be required for the heating and air conditioning system in a brewery.

Boiler online monitoring:
The BrewMax is specifically designed for the Brew Industry. The performance (i.e. energy efficiency), of any brewery is measured in terms of the Brew:Fuel ratio. The major parameters that affect this ratio are the boiler performance, condensate recovery factor, plant capacity utilization pattern, etc. BrewMax measures all these parameters to provide the overall thermal energy consumption of the plant and the Brew:Fuel ratio. This data is a useful tool in assessing the energy efficiency of the unit in terms of an overall metric – the Brew:Fuel Ratio. The intelligent data analysis module is incorporated within the PC based BrewMax Software to generate various reports in tabular, graphical formats for further analysis.