It is not uncommon to find limitations in boiler or cooling capacity that hamper production rates. Waste heat recovery can be an easy way to resolve these bottlenecks. Recovering heat means the load on the cooling and heating systems is reduced and the free capacity can be used for increased production.
Alfa Laval’s compact heat exchangers are a perfect match when space is the limiting factor for increased production. The high efficiency and small footprint means they offer much higher capacity per square meter than shell-and-tube heat exchangers.
In some processes, such as sugar production from sugar cane, coke oven gas refining, and sugar-based ethanol production, combustible by-products are burned to generate process steam and heat.
With the introduction of a heat recovery system, the need to burn by-products as fuel may be reduced and they can be sold instead. Some Alfa Laval customers have started profitable biomass pellet operations, or gasification-based chemicals production.
