Due to the increasing demands of the cleaning operations at its Preston factory (particularly at weekends), Fox’s Biscuits has replaced its existing two, 1,000 litre calorifiers with an EasiHeat system from Spirax Sarco.
“Although we are often producing at the weekend we don’t usually have every line running, so that’s when we wash absolutely everything,” said central services charge hand, Graham Walker. “The problem with calorifiers is that if you take out 500 litres you have to put 500 litres of cold water in and start heating that up again. It wasn’t very efficient and we couldn’t meet demand, causing delays in cleaning, and increasing our operating costs.”
The EasiHeat system uses a steam-to-hot water plate heat exchanger to provide domestic hot water on demand. This approach is typically much more energy efficient than systems relying on stored hot water because it eliminates a significant proportion of heat losses.
An EasiHeat system would normally enable an organisation to eliminate hot water storage entirely, but due to Fox’s operating schedule, the two calorifiers can still be used as buffers. “We might have people cleaning until 5.00pm or 6.00pm on a Saturday, but having the buffer vessels means we can turn off the boilers at 3.00pm if we’ve finished producing, which further improves energy efficiency,” said Walker.
The hot water system is set up so that the EasiHeat feeds the factory’s taps directly on demand and can also maintain the temperature in the buffer vessels when it would otherwise be idle.
