Lowering Fuel Costs in your Oxidizer

Being safe. Check. Saving Energy. Check. Lowering Fuels Costs? Let's discuss how this too can be checked off our list of achievements that come from adding an LFL Analyzer to your oxidizer.

When using oxidizers, whether they be Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers (RTO’s), Catalytic or Recuperative oxidizers, there’s an opportunity to save energy and fuel costs. Instead of heating up excess ventilation air in the oxidizer to its process temperatures, a Flammability Analyzer can be added to help put more solvent into the oxidizer. This will reduce the amount of fresh air needed to be heated, which will provide a substantial cost savings.

Let’s break this down with an example from one of our customers, who uses RTO’s:

1. Maximize the solvent levels in their process to reduce their operating costs - They knew if they increased the solvent exhaust to their RTO to 25% LFL, they would reduce the amount of heated ventilation air moving through their system. This would optimize their RTO efficiency and lower their energy costs.
2. Automate their damper controls to maximize their energy savings - Since they already had LFL analyzers in place for safety, “best safety practices” allowed for additional solvent vapor analyzers to be installed onto the process to specifically control damper positions. By adding the additional analyzers they were able to minimize the amount of ventilation air needed to maintain a safe LFL level in the ovens and RTO, thus saving money on heated air costs.

The implementation of these concepts gave them an additional fuel savings by fine-tuning their controls in real time mode and increased their average solvent load from 12% to an average of 23% LFL with a $300,000 savings in their first year, running at only 50% capacity.

To find out more details read our RTO Optimization Case History.