Automatic boiler control reduces NIPA's energy costs by £100 000/a
15 Jan 2000
At its intermediate chemicals site near Manchester, NIPA Laboratories has saved up to £100 000 a year on fuel costs by switching from oil to gas for firing the site's boilers. And by improving control of the boilers, considerable manpower savings have been made.
Steam is used around the site to heat storage tanks, autoclaves and process vats. It is generated in three centralised boilers, which are now fired by gas bought on an interruptible tariff. Steam consumption is around 20 000lb/h.
Control of the boilers has been improved with the installation of automatic systems from Spirax Sarco. One set of systems controls level while the other deals with blowdown of the boilers.
Spirax's automatic self-monitoring level control systems comply with the Health and Safety Executive's Guidance Note PM5. Under PM5 such self-monitoring systems require only weekly testing compared with the daily tests required of the previous float level controls.
The automatic TDS (total dissolved solids) blowdown systems have also done away with any need for a boiler attendant to manually control boiler water contamination through side blowdown.
`These systems are saving up to 20 man-hours per week,' says Frank Grimshaw, NIPA's engineering manager, `which is a valuable resource freed up for other tasks. In addition, the TDS level in the boilers is more consistent and the amount of blowdown has reduced, which is saving energy.'
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