Corus improves energy recovery with new steam traps30 July 2010
Corus's Trostre steel plant in Llanelli, South Wales has installed Gem Venturi orifice steam traps as part of its energy conservation and CO2 emissions programme – and is saving £500 per week.
The site produces over 400,000 tonnes a year of packaging steels for the UK market, and operates a continuous annealing (CAPL) process line to give the steel its required hardness.
Dr Darryl Lewis, energy operations manager at Corus, explains that the CAPL process line uses around 600 tonnes a week of saturated steam at 8 BarG, and that at any one time there will be more than 1,000 metres of strip in transit.
The site had previously installed a Gem Venturi steam trap, following a bucket test on a line drainage trap, which had provided 60% savings – but when Thermal Energy International surveyed the CAPL line and V stand mill, it found 25% of the 12 steam traps had failed closed and 17% open.
Now, a total of 18 Gem Venturi orifice steam traps have replaced the earlier mechanical steam traps.
"I have been extremely pleased both with the operation of the traps and, equally importantly, the after sales service provided by TEI's engineers", comments Lewis.
"The site was the first steel works and heavy industry in the UK to win a Carbon Trust Standard Accreditation in January 2010, in recognition of our commitment to reducing energy and CO2 emissions. The trap improvement programme was an important element in achieving this".
Based on nominal consumption rates of 600 tonnes of steam a week, the Gem traps are providing around 5% energy savings, which equates to £500 per week, based on a gas tariff of £4.4/GJ and condensate waste treatment costs. These savings, says Lewis, will provide a payback on the steam traps in around 30 weeks.
Brian Tinham
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