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Catalent saves energy costs with Easiheat systems

A Spirax Sarco product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jun 29, 2009

Catalent Pharma Solutions has swapped its old shell-and-tube calorifiers for compact Spirax Sarco Easiheat steam to hot water systems.

Spirax Sarco calculated that Catalent could save GBP6,500 a year in energy costs by replacing a single 540kW calorifier with an Easiheat.

Catalent has been gradually replacing its old heat exchangers over that past five years, and now has nine Easiheat systems in place.

The biggest saving for Catalent is in downtime and maintenance costs, according to engineering manager Arthur Burnett.

'The main thing is that we now have no summer shutdown, when it used to take two weeks,' he said.

'Also, we can look after the heat exchangers with one utility engineer instead of four, so it frees up time for our maintenance team.

'Previously, there was so much work involved with the calorifiers that we sometimes had to bring in contractors to service them, which was obviously another expense,' he added.

Shell-and-tube heat exchangers are pressure vessels and must therefore be dismantled annually for an insurance inspection.

Easiheat systems rely on stainless-steel plate heat exchangers (PHEs), which eliminate the need for stripping down.

PHEs are also extremely compact and energy efficient.

Catalent's Swindon factory encapsulates various products in soft gel capsules.

Between them, the heat exchangers serve two hot water systems, one at 80C for process water and air conditioning, and the other at 60C for hand washing.

According to Burnett, the old calorifiers were more than 20 years old.

They were not very efficient, slow to heat up and caused a bottleneck in the process.

In contrast, he added that the Easiheat units are more than equal to the task.

'We used to run three large calorifiers for one application and replaced them with two compact Easiheat systems,' he said.

'Although we always have one on permanent stand-by, for safety and maintenance precautions, we've never even had to use it for an application because they're so efficient,' he added.

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