Food companies face an energy double whammy. Not only do most manufacturers need gas, electricity or steam to heat, cook or sterilise their products, the majority also need energy to cool, refrigerate or freeze them afterwards.

Dunphy Combustion is responding to the growing demand from manufacturing and maintenance engineers for experience-based, comparative data about the suitability of bio-fuels for use in production processes. Specifiers and designers of burner/boiler packages intended to run on bio-fuels can now obtain comparative bio-fuels analyses from Dunphy, plus the opportunity to set up and observe tests.

Macphie of Glenbervie, one of the UK's leading independent food ingredients manufacturers, recently achieved energy savings of 6.5% after installing the Fuel+ magnetic fuel treatment system supplied by Maxsys.

After two years of testing, boiler maker Byworth says it has proved that boilers which incorporate internally-finned X-ID fire tubes in place of plain boiler tubes greatly enhance the heat transfer rate by up to 85%.

It is calculated that British industry wastes £3bn a year in energy costs purely through steam loss caused by mechanical steam traps leaking precious steam when open or backing up condensate. Now Gardner Energy Management has launched a new steam trap, the GEM Quartz Trap Set.