Diageo reports significant savings from venture orifice steam traps 26 May 2010

Diageo's 18-acre Runcorn plant is reporting significant savings in energy, replacement costs and maintenance of its steam traps, following installation of Thermal Energy International's Venturi Orifice Gem traps.

Thermal Energy installed 71 steam traps throughout the Guinness bottling and canning plant, and Diageo says payback was less than 12-months.

Steve McConnell, engineering manager at the Runcorn plant, explains that prior to the Gem steam traps, each year a certain percentage of his steam traps failed open, so wasting expensive steam, or jammed shut, risking water hammer and system failure.

Thermal Energy carried out a site survey, he says, which revealed the extent of the problem and quantified the wasted energy and maintenance costs, as well as the production downtime.

The organisation also said that, by replacing the existing traps with the Gem venturi orifice design (which has no moving parts), blocked steam traps could be prevented from impacting on production. Also, by efficiently returning condensate back to the boilers, energy savings would be made.

"Mechanical traps fail and this has an effect on production times and costs as well as energy, maintenance and the environment," confirms McConnell. "Gem fixed orifice venturi steam traps do not fail open and, because of this, the plant is benefiting from improved environmental practice as well as large cost savings."

Brian Tinham

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