Soluciones Integrales de Combustión (SIC) integrates the challenges of energy savings and care for the environment, eliminating solid particles, in an environmental management project for the chemical industry that is thus aligned with the European emissions standard.

Currently, the Spanish thermal engineering has begun energy saving and environmental care work with the installation of the necessary equipment in the biomass boiler to achieve the objective of a manufacturer of expanded polyethylene, a material with high recovery capacity against impacts, used as packaging for numerous sectors, including food. To its resistance characteristic, polyethylene adds other properties, such as its good performance as a thermal and acoustic insulator, in addition to being a very light material.

Energy savings and care for the environment 

Soluciones Integrales de Combustión will install an economizer in this chemical project in order to achieve energy savings in the boiler system. This efficient device is capable of absorbing the heat energy of the combustion gas from the boiler in the chemical plant and, through the process of conduction of the gas through the cold water pipe network, the economizer will be responsible for transferring the heat energy to the water, raising the temperature of the boiler feed water.

In this way, the economizer will allow the plant to take advantage of energy that would otherwise be lost and reuse it to reduce energy consumption and increase thermal performance. Typically, this type of device allows fuel savings of around 10% or more in the installations, which represents an optimization of the plant and entails short return on investment periods.

Improving the environment with a bag filter

With the challenge of implementing an emissions treatment system and thus reducing solid particles, Soluciones Integrales de Combustion is implementing a bag filter in the plant, which will prevent the emission of harmful particles into the atmosphere.

A bag filter is one of the specific pieces of equipment for collecting particles and purifying gas streams. Its operation consists of passing the contaminated gas or air stream through a filtering object (sleeves, etc.). In this way, the dust particles are separated and subsequently discharged for collection and/or reuse in some cases, while the clean air goes into the atmosphere.

The bag filter is responsible for capturing these toxic particles that are suspended in the gases produced by industrial processes, and which must be managed to improve the quality of the air that is discharged outside.

What are bag filters used for?

By using bag filters, several results are achieved:

• Control air pollution, improving health and safety in industrial environments.
• Reduction in equipment maintenance, since these particles can cause wear and damage to machinery.
• Recovery of particles that may be valuable for other industrial processes.

Commitment to energy savings and care for the environment

Research shows that increasing energy efficiency is key to limiting global warming to below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. However, last year, according to data collected by the IEA, the annual rate of progress in that area was reduced in 2023 to just over 1%, due to different factors, such as record heat levels, which increased demand. air conditioning in hot areas.

According to the International Energy Organization, increasing energy efficiency would reduce consumer energy costs in advanced economies by up to a third and allow for large savings in countries with emerging economies. In this sense, IEA calls for increasing efforts to double the rate of annual progress in energy efficiency to exceed 4%, so “governments must accelerate action and the private sector must also play its role,”  assured Fatih Birol, IEA Executive Director.