Demonstration of Heat Recovery in the Meat Industry

Abstract

Canada Packers Inc. has successfully demonstrated condensing flue gas heat recovery and rendering vapour heat recovery under the Federal/Provincial Conservation and Renewable Energy Demonstration Agreement. The condensing flue gas heat recovery system, designed and manufactured by John Thurley Ltd., has been in operation at the Winnipeg Packinghouse Plant since the summer of 1982. It is capable of recovering about four times as much heat as conventional systems, such as economizers and combustion air preheaters. This is due to its ability to recover latent heat by condensing the flue gas water vapour, and to recover a greater portion of the sensible heat. As a result, the exit flue gas temperature is reduced to about 30 C. The heat recovery system is capable of heating water to about 60 C, thus it is ideally suited to operations which require large quantities of hot water, At Winnipeg the pre-heated water is used for processing, sanitation and boiler make-up. The rendering vapour heat recovery system, in operation at the Moose Jaw Packinghouse Plant since December 1982, recovers previously lost waste heat produced by four batch inedible rendering cookers. The vapour, which has the properties of atmospheric saturated steam, is used to preheat city water to about 65 C, by means of a spiral heat exchanger. The preheated water is heated to the process temperature using steam.