Crisp Malting invests thousands to slash carbon footprint
Resource management group Veolia is undertaking the project, which entails the design, supply and installation of a 1.5MWe CHP unit at Crisp Malting’s Great Ryburgh facility in Fakenham, Norfolk.
The new unit is replacing two 600kWe units from Cogenco, which is part of Veolia, that have been running for 15 years and are now at the end of their operational lives. It will provide electricity and heat to the malting plant.
To use the heat from the CHP plant, a hot water-to-air heat exchanger will provide hot air that is used in the malt kilns as part of the production process.
“The unit will supply heat to two kilns – we alternate the kilns so one is running every other day,” explained Steve Surridge, Crisp Malting’s chief engineer.
Ideal application
The facility was an ideal application for CHP, said Veolia. As well as the massive heat load, Great Ryburgh had a large electrical load due to the fans and conveyor systems used in malt production, it explained.
Work started on site in August and would be completed before the end of the year, said Tom Gibson, project manager at Cogenco, which will modify the site’s electrical transformers and heat exchanger connections.
“The main challenge for us is to reconfigure the plant for one single CHP unit instead of the two units that supply the M&E [mechanical and electrical] systems currently,” Gibson said.
Expansion
Great Ryburgh is the largest of Crisp Malting’s five production sites. Through a programme of expansion and modernisation, it has become one of the largest and most efficient malting plants in the UK, producing 115,000t of finished malt a year.
Producing malt since 1870, the Crisp Malting Group is a leading UK privately owned malting company, supplying a full range of high-quality wholegrain and crushed cereals around the world to brewers, distillers and food producers.
Cogenco will provide long-term operation and maintenance of the units, with full monitoring from its Horsham base in West Sussex.
