Going on with the enviromental theme, I would like to talk about something new and a little unusual, not exactly focused on heat exchangers, cooling towers and thermoregulating units. Or to say it better, these are all involved, but from a different perspective. The energy saving is something the whole industrial world is increasingly looking at, and when in Tempco we are asked to evaluate a solution for temperature regulation in some industrial process, the very first thing we are requested to is which kind of energy saving levels can be achieved, by implementing technologies and solutions for energy efficiency along the temperature regulation in the production process involved.
Some example are the employ of inverters on engine fans, saving energy when a lower power capacity is required for ventilation, for instance on dry coolers, cooling towers and free coolers. But also the use of tiristors on heating resistances, when engineering a thermoregulating unit with electrical heating section, enabling the adjustment of the power absorbed supplying a lower power capacity in kilowatt needed in a certain moment. Finally, the use of inverters on circulating pumps, as we are actually installing on a very interesting application for a customer in the metallurgical sector in the northern province of Milan, where we are implementing a saving and energy efficiency system for the pumps working in the cooling circuit.
But even more interesting would be the possibility to extend the use and the advantaged of these solutions in the civil sector also, for everyone’s benefit, and not only for the industry. In fact, I’ve been recently in contact with many companies, and one in particular, highly committed in the research of energy saving applications in non-industrial fields, thus regarding applications in the civil sector such as with conditioning, heat pumps and geothermal heat pumps. Discussing these opportunities really gave me thrills, moreover in the past Tempco has already developed applications with TCOIL dimple jacket immersion heat exchangers for the energy and heat recovery from sea water, feeding the condensing water of heat pumps. A similar application was also installed on the Lake of Como, and another one in Ispra, on heat pumps leveraging the water of a turbine drain.
Well, this being said, this company asked us to do some tests for energy recovery with our TCOIL immersion heat exchangers, from heat waste coming from domestic hot water and other services. An application surely worth a more in depth study. The main problem here are the costs of investments that can rise up, with a return of investment quite in the long term period. But I really feel and think it is truly worth it here to invest a bit more, even with a long-term ROI and thus a different pay back compared to the very short-term pay backs usually required for industrial investment plans.
I’m therefore very convinced that it is worth it to study what it can be achieved and done in these new sectors, and that’s why in Tempco we have ensured our full availability to make tests and attempts, hoping we will be soon able to meet in person – not really easy in this period of public health emergency due to the cover-19 outbreak we’re all living – and proving this systems, collaborating to contribute in our own small way to the health of the planet.
A new effort that joins what we are already doing in Tempco for the environment, as we’ve already talked about it, such as the use of 100% renewable energy and the dematerialization of our paper archives. These are themes that I would love to discuss with you all, and looking forward for your comments and suggestions here below. Maybe a webinar or a Skype call would be also interesting to plan, to find out what are the latest trends and best practices in energy saving solutions for the next years.