Food Processing

Food Processing is one of the largest energy using sectors in New Zealand and has many quick payback energy saving options. With Emsol, you should be able to achieve savings of between 20% to 40%.

Overview

 

Food processing includes industries such as meat, dairy, fish and vegetable processing. The largest energy using technologies are typically refrigeration, boilers, process heat (steam and hot water systems. Refrigeration is often more than half of electricity use and process heat is often more than half of the site’s total energy use.

 

Other common technologies using between 5% and 20% of energy include fans, pumps, compressed air, and lighting.

 

One of the most cost effective and common energy saving opportunities is with keeping maintenance up to date. This includes numerous scheduled maintenance tasks such as stopping diligently compressed air leaks (save 20% – 50% of compressed air energy) or keeping refrigeration condensers/cooling towers clean.

 

Many energy saving opportunities also have a number of other benefits such as improving health and safety (such as stopping steam leaks and insulating steam valves) or productivity improvements (such as increasing rate of blast freezing in summer or not over drying powder products).

 

Heat recovery is a large energy saving option in many areas at a food processing site. Often the payback period will be 2 to 6 years. These options range from recapturing heat from steriliser water going to drain to recovering low temperature heat from refrigeration or compressed air systems.

Technologies

 

Refer to the following technologies in decreasing order of energy use:

1. Process Heat/Boilers

2. Refrigeration

3. Pumps

4. Compressed Air

5. Lights

For larger energy savings set up an energy management programme.

 

LINKS

EECA food processing

 

 

CASE STUDIES

https://www.emsol.co.nz/industrial-savings/case-studies/