So Many Ways to Save Energy

In a large facility, like the one a specialty chemical company operates, there are often many opportunities for energy savings. Particularly, on the different types of process heating units.

• Catalytic Oxidizer - By continuously monitoring an oxidizer with a total hydrocarbon (THC) monitor you can track your VOC emissions, even on an hourly basis. This not only provides real‐time data of annual emissions, but also helps you understand your short term emission limits. By having a real indication of emissions, you'll have more flexibility in making changes to your process, even more than calculations would have produced. If the readings from the continuous monitoring prove your catalytic oxidizer is operating effectively and abating the VOCs at lower temperatures, your destruction efficiency rating could be reduced, which would save on fuel and even catalytic bed replacement.
• Flare - Ok, are you ready for this? It may actually be possible to sustain your flare from your own process gases. First, you need to use a real‐time continuous BTU analyzer to read the lower heating value of the waste stream going into your flare. The intent would be to inject natural gas into the flare gas stream if the heating value of the waste stream were to drop below 350 BTU/scf to keep the flare operating >98% destruction efficiency. If you find that your waste gas is typically ~ 600 BTU/scf, you might not need to use any natural gas to keep your flare operating. And there you have it - your flare is sustained by your own process gases!
• Dryers - You must have an LFL/LEL system on your batch dryers to operate safely and accurately. By measuring the % LFL in the dryer stream, the dryer can be shut down quickly in the case that the % LFL gets too high. With the proper LFL system in place, you can SAFELY increase product throughput which results in improved delivery times.

Everyone wants to increase energy efficiencies and optimize productivity while reducing emissions, ultimately saving money. By using the appropriate monitoring systems for all the different processes in your application, you can often see dramatic cost savings while running at peak efficiency.

Read on to find out how one of our customers did just that.