Instant heating is flavour of the month at Fox’s biscuits09 December 2010

Fox's Biscuits in Preston reports that its problem of hot water shortages has been solved since installing an EasiHeat engineered system, from Spirax Sarco.

Central services charge hand Graham Walker explains that the plant's previous system, which comprised two, 1,000-litre calorifiers, couldn't keep up with demand from the site's cleaning operations, especially at weekends.

"Although we are often producing at the weekend, we don't usually have every line running – so that's when we wash absolutely everything," he says.

"The problem with calorifiers is that, if you take out 500 litres you have to put 500 litres of cold water in and start heating that up again. It wasn't very efficient and we couldn't meet demand – causing delays in cleaning, and increasing our operating costs."

Fox's new EasiHeat system uses a compact steam-to-hot water plate heat exchanger to provide domestic hot water on demand. It was supplied skid-mounted and ready to connect to the site's utilities, and Walker believes it's clearly more energy efficient than the stored hot water system alone.

"Cost savings are definitely there, although I'm not in a position to say exactly how much we've saved," he says.

That's partly because, in Fox's case, the original calorifiers have been retained as hot water buffers, to match the site's operating schedule. "We might have people cleaning until five or six o'clock on a Saturday, but having the buffer vessels means we can turn off the boilers at three o'clock, if we've finished producing, which further improves energy efficiency," explains Walker.

Brian Tinham

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