Within the metal coil coating industry vast amounts of energy are used in the degreasing, coating and drying processes as well as by the environmental air pollution abatement plant.
As part of a customers modernisation strategy, they were installing a new Floatation dryer, operating at over 2.0m wide and 200m/min and in excess of 70m long, together with a Regenerative Thermal Oxidiser replacing an old inefficient direct fired oxidiser. The modernisation strategy goals included reducing energy use and reducing operating costs.
The engineered solution included a system that recovered waste heat energy at High Temperature to return the energy indirectly to the Floatation Dryer process at temperatures up to 550°C. Indirect Heat Recovery was used to prevent any adverse effect on the product quality. In addition to the primary heat recovery, a second set of heat recovery plant was installed extracting more energy from the waste gases to be used as Hot Water for degreasing.
The engineered solution recovered significant amounts of energy from a dirty process waste stream and returned clean usable energy to the factory.
Over 2500 kWh of energy is typically recovered with a value of £600,000 per year.