Case Study

Drink ingredients manufacturer

Bottle Production Line

Drink ingredients manufacturer

Flash steam recovery saves ingredients maker £40,000 a year

A Spirax Sarco energy recovery system has enabled a food and drink ingredients manufacturer to slash its energy costs by £40,000 per year. 

The company uses steam to heat drum dryers to cook its ingredients. Previously, two pumps returned condensate from the drum dryers to the boiler house. This was proving inefficient with flash steam being lost to atmosphere, resulting in substantial energy losses.

“The system was no longer energy efficient – we were literally losing flash steam out of the room,” explains the company’s Project Manager.

Spirax Sarco conducted an audit of the site. This identified the opportunity to save substantial energy and reduce carbon emissions by 348 tonnes annually through the installation of a Spirax Sarco Flash Recovery Energy Management Equipment (FREME) solution.

FREME heat exchanger

Spirax Sarco Flash Recovery Energy Management Equipment (FREME)

With the FREME installed, condensate from the drum dryers is now fed to a flash recovery vessel, which separates condensate and flash steam into two streams. Each stream then flows through a dedicated plate heat exchanger, which transfers the energy to the boiler feedwater. Because FREME is a closed, pressurised system, returned condensate is fed into the boiler at much higher temperatures than a conventional system open to Flash steam recovery saves ingredients maker £40,000 a year atmosphere. This reduces the amount of work the boiler needs to do, cutting energy use.

The investment in the FREME saved the company £40,000 in 12 months with similar savings expected moving forwards, thus achieving a payback of around two years. The FREME system is also covered by a 12-month Spirax Sarco Service Contract.

“It makes good business practice to have new systems covered with a service contract. Spirax Sarco’s knowledge of the system, its prompt attention and the availability of parts mean reduced downtime in the event of a problem, thereby maintaining the cost saving benefits of the system,” says the company’s Maintenance Manager.

“It makes good business practice to have new systems covered with a service contract. Spirax Sarco’s knowledge of the system, its prompt attention and the availability of parts mean reduced downtime in the event of a problem, thereby maintaining the cost saving benefits of the system."
Maintenance Manager