Energy improvement and emissions reduction in Bilbaína de Alquitranes

Posted on: 27 / 11 / 2024 | 0 Comentarios | Tags: ahorro energético, Descarbonización industrial, eficiencia energética, emissions reduction, energy efficiency, Energy improvement, Industrial decarbonization, reduction of emissions

E&M Combustion has completed a series of works in the furnace and in the thermal oil boiler of the plant owned by the Bilbaína de Alquitranes (BASA) company, in Barakaldo, with the aim of undertaking energy improvement and reduction of emissions of the plant.

The project is part of the strategic policy of decarbonization and improvement of energy efficiency of the aforementioned company. These two elements, the furnace and the boiler, are part of the tar manufacturing process, an activity to which the chemical company is dedicated.

The most important challenge that E&M faced in this facility to carry out the energy improvement and reduction of emissions has consisted of acting on the dehydrated tar heating furnace. This furnace has the complexity in its design that, apart from the coils it has for heating the tar, it incorporates two economizers. A first economizer is a steam superheater, and the second equipment is a heat recovery used as part of the process of obtaining tar.

E&M’s initial idea was to install a gas-air heat exchanger (heat recovery) with the aim of taking advantage of the heat from the furnace exhaust gases and preheating the combustion air of the burner. This preheated air would feed a state-of-the-art burner model JBD-3.500-G from E&M Combustión, to be able to take advantage of that heat. These burners also incorporate an electronic control associated with an oxygen control of the chimney gases that produces a continuous optimization of the combustion values, which translates into a reduction in energy losses. They also incorporate an F.G.R. system, which consists of the recirculation of a percentage of gases from the chimney to the burner itself, to achieve the reduction of NOx emissions, in line with the future implementation of the new requirements of environmental regulations.

Once the project was analyzed in more depth, it was decided to approach it in a comprehensive way by making some modifications to the oven that have led to even further improvements in performance. They also incorporate an F.G.R. system, which consists of the recirculation of a percentage of gases from the chimney to the burner itself, to achieve the reduction of NOx emissions, in line with the future implementation of the new requirements of environmental regulations.

Energy improvement and reduction of emissions

On the one hand, the furnace had an interior radiant tube that interfered with the exchange of the coils and required the use of an exterior preheater to heat the tar to a minimum entrance temperature to the furnace. It was decided, therefore, to eliminate this interior radiant tube, achieving an increase in energy transfer in the furnace coils. It was also decided to install a new, more efficient superheater that would allow it to adapt to the new temperature pattern inside the oven.

The increased performance of the coils has made it unnecessary to use one of the economizers either. “That is, we have eliminated two exchangers from the process that required continuous heat input. Aside from this, we have also installed the aforementioned recuperator with the latest generation burner,” says Iñigo Béjar, CEO of E&M Combustión.

This entire optimization process has resulted in a final saving in gas consumption in this furnace of approximately 13%, which makes a really quick return on investment. In turn, this means avoiding emitting about 480 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere with the consequent environmental benefit and optimization of the decarbonization process.

On the other hand, E&M Combustión has installed another heat recovery and another state-of-the-art burner in the thermal oil boiler used in the industrial process of this plant with the aforementioned benefits. The expected savings in this case are 8% on gas consumption and the elimination of emissions is 160 tons of CO2 per year.

Bilbaína de Alquitranes

Bilbaína de Alquitranes, S.A. (BASA) is a company located in Barakaldo, and has more than a century of experience in the sector. The company focuses its industrial activity on the distillation of coal tar from the coke batteries of the main European steel groups. Since 1990, the group has carried out a major technological renovation of its plants in order to improve and expand all its production processes and provide itself with the appropriate means to face the strong competition in the sector.

E&M Combustión

E&M Combustion is a company located in Artea. Since its creation in 2004, it has designed and manufactured industrial burners with the main objective of providing a technical response and specific solutions to combustion processes in the industry. The wide range of combustion equipment offered allows us to provide technical solutions to the needs of the energy, oil & gas, food and beverage, chemical, steel and metallurgical sectors, among others.

As industrial combustion engineering company, it develops innovative technologies to offer gas, diesel, mixed and alternative fuel burners, made to measure. The company is an international reference in ATEX and NEC burners (for operating in potentially explosive atmospheres), hot gas generators and combustion equipment for alternative fuels such as hydrogen and biogas. E&M Combustion allocates 70% of its production to international markets.