Dutch food products group traps energy savings

Wormerveer, The Netherlands - Loders Crocklaan, a producer in the supply of oils, fats and nutritional ingredients, has achieved a 10% saving in steam consumption and increased production by 15% following the installation of  450 steam traps across its Wormerveer plant. The Venturi Orifice steam traps, from Gardner Energy Management, are being employed in heat exchangers, trace heating lines, steamers, evaporators and autoclaves, with condensate capacities of 5 kg/h up to 9 ton/h per trap.

Loders Crocklaan, which is owned by the Malaysia-based IOI Corp, supplies palm-based products to the global food industry. The Dutch company also operates manufacturing facilitiess in Malaysia, the US and Canada and in 2005 opened Europe’s largest palm oil processing plant in Rotterdam.

The GEM steam traps were found to be 50% more efficient than thermostatic traps used on site, according to Leen Wijngaarden, senior engineer at the Dutch site. Since then, he said, Loders Croklaan has replaced 98% of its steam traps with the Venturi Orifice traps, which have also substantially reduced the backpressure in the condensate system.

“Since the completion of this project we have noted a number of improvements in our system,”, said Wijngaarden. “In addition to achieving more than 10% saving in steam consumption we are making substantial savings on make-up water. We have also achieved a 10-20% faster warm up on our batch processes, a decrease in water hammer and production on our distillers has increased by 10 to 15%.“

Loders Croklaan has also cancelled the installation of a new process computer designed to increase the output of its distillers as the new steam traps have created a more stable process.

“Payback on this project is much less than the one year anticipated”, concluded Wijngaarden, addign that Loders Croklaan has now equipped its new Rotterdam plant with the GEM steam traps prior to startup and aims installed the units in its US and Malaysian facilities.