At Swisspearl’s factory in Finland, a simple but highly effective adjustment to the exhaust piping has led to considerable savings in energy—and lowered costs.
At the Lohja plant, 45 km west of Helsinki, drying lines are part of the production of fibre cement boards. They ensure the correct moisture content of the product at the end of production. During the drying process, warm air is circulated in the oven and then released through an exhaust pipe to the outdoors. By redesigning the piping, the waste air from one drying line can now be fed back for reuse in preheating the heating combustion air in both drying lines.
Technical manager Mikko Ylikopsa and his team had looked into ordering all new equipment, but with careful calculation and engineering ingenuity they realized they could get almost the same results by simply adding an insulated connection pipe to the existing setup. The exact amount of energy conserved in this way will vary depending on the product being manufactured—and on seasonal temperatures, which in Lohja can drop below -20 Celcius in the winter months.