The next era of food production with GEA NEXUS
Climate change and a growing world population put increased pressure on the energy-intensive food industry to meet rising demand while reducing energy and resource use. George Shepherd, GEA’s Global Technical Sustainability Manager, explains how GEA uses its engineering know-how to help processors improve energy and resource efficiency while increasing productivity.
George Shepherd, GEA
How can the food industry benefit from NEXUS?
George Shepherd: The food industry is a heavy energy user throughout the supply chain – from agriculture, through processing, transport, handling and ultimately storage and retail. Just considering processing, heat production and chilling can represent a significant share of energy costs in food processing, so reducing these costs is a huge driver for food processors. GEA’s NEXUS approach integrates process and utility requirements, including cooling and heating, to help identify opportunities to reduce operational energy consumption, associated greenhouse-gas emissions and operating costs.*
What level of savings can be achieved?
GS: By pooling GEA’s extensive expertise in both processing and utilities, NEXUS can make a difference to food companies – designing tailor-made solutions that can help improve process and energy efficiency, while meeting increasing energy reduction challenges. Implementing energy efficient cooling and heating solutions early in the design phase of the entire food factory can help food manufacturers uncover opportunities to use energy more efficiently and reduce operating costs, CO₂ and NOx emissions.*
Sustainability and value creation go hand in hand with NEXUS.
We are not talking about marginal improvements. Integrating energy-efficient heating and cooling across the manufacturing process can unlock significant opportunities to improve energy efficiency and reduce operating costs.*
Why is it so important to connect production and utilities processes?
GS: Carbon-neutral manufacturing is an important ambition for many food producers. But how can progress towards this goal be achieved? It starts by bringing process and utilities expertise together. By looking at the entire production process alongside its heating and cooling requirements, GEA can help identify opportunities to improve energy efficiency, reduce operating costs and support reductions in specified operational emissions.
It’s not simply about adding a heat pump for waste heat recovery or upgrading cooling in isolation. NEXUS takes a holistic view of the process and its utilities, using GEA’s integrated engineering expertise to identify opportunities for better integration and more efficient use of energy and resources.
Why is early cooperation and coordination key?
GS: It’s all about the smart integration between the process demands and cooling and heating requirements. Traditionally the refrigeration experts (or let’s now start calling them the cooling and heating experts, because that’s what we are) are normally the last part of the equation. The process equipment has been purchased, utilities, which incorporates the boilers, are also agreed … and then somewhere down the line they realize they need cooling. By then it’s too late! If we have the opportunity to sit with the process team at the beginning, and, of course, we have the unique advantage of being able to do this within GEA, then we can look at the full process.
What other types of food processing applications can take advantage of NEXUS? Is it only applicable for greenfield projects?
GS: Our NEXUS holistic approach can be applied across a broad range of applications and project sizes. Whether you are developing a greenfield plant or upgrading an existing brownfield facility, NEXUS brings process and utilities requirements together, from the temperatures needed to blanch vegetables to those required to defeather chickens.
The majority of food processing applications require refrigeration at some point in the process, but they also have significant heat requirements for operations like wash down and cleaning in place (CIP). Some of the highest heat demands are for processes using boilers to cook or pasteurize products. These products are then cooled back down again by a refrigeration plant, and the result can be a massive waste of energy.
In such a situation, a heat pump can raise the temperature of waste heat to 90°C and above, allowing it to be reused in the process. This reduces the amount of heat required from other sources, often a fossil-fuel-fired boiler. Depending on the application, this can substantially reduce reliance on fossil-fuel-based heat and, where operating conditions allow, potentially replace the boiler entirely. Recovering and reusing waste heat can therefore improve overall energy efficiency and reduce associated CO₂ emissions.
NEXUS makes sense across food processing applications.
Could you give us a real-life example of NEXUS for the food industry?
GS:
Here‘s one great example of GEA’s NEXUS team at work for Wipasz SA, one of the largest Polish animal feed producers and leader in the production of fresh chicken meat. For its newly launched poultry plant in Poland, the company was seeking solutions to make the production more sustainable and energy efficient.
Poultry factories such as
Wipasz
see the significant financial and environmental benefits of using heat recovery and a heat pump in production processes, especially those that require the application of heat during preparation and subsequent chilling and freezing. They invited our refrigeration colleagues in GEA Refrigeration Poland to join their early plant design phase, so the heating and cooling integration with production process could be configured to improve heating and cooling integration across the processing plant.. In this way we learn from each other and work together to drive for a more energy-efficient and future-proofed production plant.
Often, the road to expansion and development is paved with interdepartmental demands and conflicting requirements – but when a facility brings its utilities and processing teams together around a common goal – identifying opportunities for cost and energy savings – it can unlock new possibilities for a more efficient and sustainable operation. With NEXUS, the focus is on creating lasting value by looking at the plant as a whole, helping teams make better use of energy and resources while supporting their sustainability goals.
A GEA refrigeration and heat pump plant was installed at Wipasz — Poland's leading poultry producer.
