New search

Share

Translations Best practice in Spanish version Best practice in French version Best practice in English version

ROQUETTE recycles flue gas heat energy from its cogeneration facilities

4. Environment

Energy / Greenhouse Gases (GHG)

Sector Food-processing
Year 2016
Country France
Transmitter World Forum for a Responsible Economy

Context

Roquette is a French group, with an industrial presence on 3 continents with 20 production sites. Its business is that of processing plant-based raw materials. Its starch manufacturing business uses energy, with significant steam requirements.

Since 2000, the Lestrem site (62 - France) has been equipped with two high-performance cogeneration facilities, enabling optimized natural gas consumption and a reduction in fossil fuel requirements compared to separate energy consumption (separate steam and electricity productions).

Objectives

  • Prevent heat loss into the atmosphere,
  • Promote heat energy recycling and reduce natural gas consumption,
  • Duplicate the process on other Group sites,
  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus contribute to the Sustainable Development policy of the Group.

APPROACH

A cogeneration facility enables simultaneous electricity and steam production for production facility requirements.

The two cogeneration lines at Lestrem each discharged approximately 500,000 kg/hr of flue gas at over 100°C. The installation of some fifty heat exchangers in 2009 made it possible to recycle the heat energy in these flue gases to produce hot water at 90°C. This water is then conveyed to the starch dryers via a circuit of pipes measuring over 2 km, at a flow rate of 240 m3/hr. On arrival, heat exchangers recycle the heat energy from the water to preheat the air in the process dryers. In this way, the temperature of the modified flue gases discharged is lowered to approximately 50°C.

This project involved a large number of company and outsourced staff. The schedule of the operation was conducted over several months and required several production shutdowns. The cost of this technical enhancement came to over €4 million.

Similar energy recycling projects have been conducted since then on other French sites: Vecquemont (80) and Beinheim (67).

This enhancement is currently being studied on other group sites, but installation will be dependent on various criteria such as: energy prices, inevitable steam use, climatic conditions and the context of each plant.

Best Practice identified by World Forum for a Responsible Economy in 2012 and updated in 2016 to reflect its evolution.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

  • Productivity gain: reduction of steam by 22 t/hour, i.e. 110,000 thermal MWh annually.
  • Contributes to the Group's overall Sustainable Development-oriented strategy.
  • Policy recompensed with First prize in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Environmental Performance awards.

Benefits

  • Reduction of CO2 emissions by 22,000 metric tons/year.
  • Helps enhance energy efficiency in the Group.
Workforce
8000 (2015)
Turnover
3,3 Milliards € (2015)
Country
France

ROQUETTE

Rue de la Haute Loge
62136 Lestrem

www.roquette.fr

Contact

Anne LAMBIN, Responsable Développement Durable, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. – Marie-Gabrielle BAILLY, Chargée de mission Développement Durable, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Mise à jour le 23/08/2016

Creative Commons Attribution This work by Réseau Alliances – World Forum Lille is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.