Electrification of high-pressure Steam thanks to heat recovery

Aanleiding

This pilot project will demonstrate how McCain can reduce CO2 emissions from natural gas combustion in its Lelystad plant and reduce future carbon price costs.

McCain has a goal to reduce the company's overall absolute CO2 footprint by 50% by 2030 from a 2017 baseline and has committed to using 100% renewable electricity by 2030.

This project is seen as a potential pilot for all large McCain plants globally to electrify and decarbonise heating. The high carbon price due to come into force in the Netherlands is a strong business driver that assists the business case, particularly at the tail end of the project.

Doelstelling

The project purpose is to electrify heat and effectively turn off the natural gas intake for a large, high heat using plant.

It does this through high-pressure steam using a series of heat pumps and mechanical vapor recompressors. This will be fed by heat recovered from our refrigeration system.

This will be the first time globally that a large plant is able to use heat pumps to remove gas for high pressure and temperature steam in an industrial process.

Korte omschrijving

A heat pump room will be created that produces the steam that is currently generated in a boiler.

There will be 3 machines that work as a team to generate this high-pressure steam.

There are 5 steps required to replace the steam generation from gas by electricity:

1. Heat recovery on the refrigeration system: The ammonia gas discharge from the refrigeration system will feed the Low-Temperature Heat Pump (LTHP).
2. The LTHP will heat water to 65°C.
3. A High-Temperature Heat Pump (HTHP) will further heat the water from 65°C to 120°C.
4. A Mechanical Vapour Recompressor will generate steam and transform it from low pressure to the 20 bar pressure required for various industrial processes.
5. Hot water and HVAC heating requirements will be supplied through an intermediate heat loop.

Resultaat

The demonstration project will generate 30T/h of high-pressure steam, as well as all the hot water and heating needs of the plant.

The entire plant will run off electrically generated heat except for an existing incinerator – which is a proof of concept that large plants can indeed switch off their gas connection.

The incinerator is used for burning fryer emissions from the fry line that cannot be replaced by heat alone, as it must be burnt.

This will represent a total CO2 emission reduction at the plant level of 81%, and a NOx emission reduction of 50% in the first year.

The plant will contract a renewable Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to ensure the electricity consumption of the plant is produced with no GHG emissions.

The outcome is an innovative approach to the electrification of heat that provides a roadmap for McCain. If this plant goes well, McCain would seek to potentially install the heat pump solution in other plants in the Netherlands (Lewedorp and Wezep) and Europe (6 additional facilities), followed by other plants globally based on local carbon pricing and gas/electricity pricing.