Spirax heat recovery system reduces energy use

A heat recovery system from Spirax Sarco has helped Abbey Corrugated become one of 12 organisations across England and Scotland to be awarded the Carbon Trust Standard.

The installation formed part of a project by Abbey to reduce its energy consumption and reduced the amount of gas burnt in the company's boiler by almost 25 per cent.

Abbey produces 160 million square metres of corrugated board annually at its site in Blunham, Bedfordshire.

It uses most of its plant steam to heat the plates and rollers in its three corrugators.

The skid-mounted Flash Recovery Energy Management Equipment system from Spirax Sarco recovers the energy in condensate and flash steam from around the plant and uses it to preheat the feed water to the boiler.

Supplying hotter feed water reduces the amount of work the boiler needs to do to raise steam.

First, hot condensate passes into a separation vessel where some of it flashes off as steam.

Next, the condensate and the flash steam each pass through a separate plate heat exchanger where they heat the pressurised feed water.

The flash steam also condenses.

The two streams then recombine before returning to the boiler feedtank.

Before the project, water entered the boiler at around 68 or 70C.

It now arrives at between 138 and 142C.

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