Spirax Sarco narrowly misses out at Carbon Trust Innovation Awards

Just weeks after winning the IChemE Award for Energy, Spirax Sarco was a close runner-up in the Industry category at the 2009 Carbon Trust Innovation Awards.

The steam expert was recognised for its pioneering Flash Recovery Energy Management Equipment (FREME) engineered system. FREME can achieve energy savings of up to 26 percent, significantly reducing carbon emissions for steam operators, and could help steam users achieve the Carbon Standard Award.

Marc Eggermont, Director UK & ROI of Spirax Sarco commented: “Spirax Sarco is committed to producing energy saving solutions and services that can help reduce the carbon footprint of any steam system. With the right controls and engineered systems, like FREME, steam will continue as the leading industrial heating medium.

“We estimate that FREME has saved about 10,000 tonnes of CO₂ to date in the UK, which will increase to a figure in the region of 100,000 tonnes over the next five years.”

Commenting on this year’s Awards, Tom Delay, Chief Executive, the Carbon Trust said: “As the UK looks to develop new low carbon solutions to tackle climate change, the breadth and depth of innovation here is deeply encouraging. Whilst many of the technologies that we looked at are still in their infancy, others already demonstrate strong commercial potential. Spirax Sarco is a global organisation and one of the leaders in its field that is making such a concerted effort towards carbon reduction in the UK."

The award winning FREME system has also been shortlisted as Product of the Year in the CIBSE Low Carbon Performance Awards. The winners of the award will be announced in February 2010.

FREME provides a closed steam system and transfers the heat from the flash steam and recovered condensate into the high pressure side of the boiler feed pumps. Temperatures in the feedtank can therefore exceed 100°C without causing pump cavitation ensuring that virtually all returned energy is used by the system. Heat and water previously discarded can now be recycled, reducing energy and water treatment costs and CO₂ emissions.

FREME works by first separating the flash steam from the condensate. The separate flash steam and condensate each travel through a dedicated plate heat exchanger to heat the pressurised feed water before it enters the boiler. The two returning streams are then recombined.

Recovering condensate from industrial steam systems is a well established energy-saving practice. Energy from condensate is used to pre-heat boiler feed water, which raises boiler efficiency and lowers emissions. Each 6°C rise in feed water temperature typically knocks 1% off a boiler’s energy consumption.

This year’s Carbon Trust Awards attracted submissions from nearly 250 of the UK’s most inspiring innovators in the development, deployment and use of low carbon technology solutions, across a range of areas from power generation to buildings and transport.

The Carbon Trust is an independent company set up in 2001 by Government in response to the threat of climate change, to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy by working with organisations to reduce carbon emissions and develop commercial low carbon technologies.