Optimising industrial process heat A practical guide to decentralised thermal management

Andy Wells
Business Development Director
Vulcanic (Spirax Group)

Executive summary

Industrial manufacturers are under increasing pressure to reduce carbon emissions while maintaining productivity, reliability and product quality. For many facilities, the greatest challenge is not identifying low carbon technologies but finding a practical pathway to implement them.

For over a century, steam has been the preferred method of delivering industrial heat. Steam remains essential for many applications and will continue to play a critical role wherever it provides the best engineering solution.

However, replacing a 10 MW or 20 MW gas-fired boiler with an electric equivalent is often constrained by electrical infrastructure, available grid capacity, capital investment and operational risk. This does not mean organisations need to wait.

By optimising existing thermal systems and progressively decentralising suitable low and medium temperature process loads using electric process heating technologies, manufacturers can begin reducing fuel consumption, lowering emissions and improving process performance using the electrical capacity already available today. As steam demand reduces over time, future investments in electric boilers, heat pumps or other low-carbon technologies become significantly more achievable.

The objective is not to replace steam. The objective is to apply the most appropriate thermal technology to each application.