Manufacturing Factory

RED was appointed to carry out an energy audit of this factory which had a significant refrigeration demand and a site-wide ammonia refrigerating system, while simultaneously requiring heat in the form of hot water for margarine production and line cleaning, etc. The hot water was generated from steam imported from a municipal plant and circulated around the site in a hot water ring main.

RED identified an opportunity to recover the waste heat both from the ammonia de-super heater and from the energy contained in the rejected water in the evaporative condenser unit, using an ammonia/water heat exchanger.

The recovered heat, at relatively low temperature, was then “upgraded” to a supply temperature of 80OC through the use of a water-to-water heat pump using CO₂ as the refrigerant, thereby significantly reducing the need to separately generate hot water, resulting in substantial cost saving and carbon reduction on site.

Key Facts

• Annual CO₂ saving of 1,900 tonnes
• A simple payback of 2.87 years on an investment of €710,000