HRS Heat Exchangers Ltd., a heat transfer specialist for the process industries, has won the ‘Best Energy from Waste Initiative’ Award at the National Recycling Awards last week for its scraped surface vacuum evaporator installed at the Scottish and Southern Energy’s Barkip anaerobic digestion plant in North Ayrshire.
The National Recycling Awards showcases new technologies being developed to tackle environmental issues. HRS was recognized for its ability to demonstrate a creative and innovative solution along with an effective business strategy to ensure waste minimization with its evaporator technology. The HRS scraped surface vacuum evaporator will enable the Barkip plant to produce 2.5 megawatts of renewable electricity in Scotland.
Recycling has become a mainstream issue in today’s world. Standard evaporation technologies for many environmental applications often fall short when it comes to delivering the desired performance. HRS’ evaporation solutions are designed for high thermal efficiency to reduce energy costs with a fouling free operation.
During the evaporation process as the concentration of solids increase, the risk of fouling substances depositing on the tube wall increases. A fouled evaporator will drop quickly in heat transfer resulting in underperformance and repeated downtime. The HRS evaporator system has been designed to address these issues. The Unicus Dynamic scraped surface heat exchanger provides continuous cleaning to the walls of the evaporator, which helps maintain the heat transfer, ensuring better utilization of the energy.
“Winning this award is a real achievement for us as it recognizes our commitment to providing effective heat transfer solutions to the waste industry. Overcoming previous fouling issues and requiring little maintenance, the HRS evaporator system provides customers with a sustainable solution that decreases downtime, improves energy performance and has a better waste recovery," said Stephen Wooler, senior design engineer, HRS Heat Exchangers Ltd.
The annual National Recycling Awards support the efforts of local authorities and councils, as well as the construction and retail sectors. More than 600 key figures in recycling and waste management gathered at the Lancaster Hotel to recognize and reward the leading companies in the industry.
Source: HRS