Oilon helps Puratos at the fore­front of sus­tain­ab­il­ity

Puratos is a Belgian man­u­fac­turer of innov­at­ive products in the bakery, con­fec­tion­ery and chocol­ate sectors, present in more than 100 coun­tries. Recently, the company took an import­ant step towards a new sus­tain­ab­il­ity foot­print: the company’s chocol­ate factory in Brazil became a bench­mark for being the first of the group to com­plete the zero-​emissions project. Now, any bar, gram or unit of chocol­ate pro­duced leaves this factory with zero CO2 emis­sions into the atmo­sphere. The company, which already had chocol­ates pro­duced with inter­na­tional quality stand­ards, adds more value to the market by con­trib­ut­ing to the global demand for redu­cing emis­sions.

And the main tool for this sig­ni­fic­ant improve­ment is the Oilon Chill­Heat heat pump.

OILON heat pump took over the hot water pro­duc­tion of the factory, which pre­vi­ously used a boiler fed with LPG fuel. Heated water is an import­ant input in the man­u­fac­ture of chocol­ate, since, in addi­tion to being used in the melting of its fat, it also keeps the line heated in the process, thus allow­ing the hand­ling of the raw mater­ial.

Emis­sions are elim­in­ated by repla­cing the fossil fuel (LPG) heating source with elec­tri­city, Oilon Chill­Heat’s energy source. The elec­tri­city used by the factory was rene­go­ti­ated and pur­chased only from sources with renew­able energy duly accred­ited with the seal of zero CO2 emis­sions. In addi­tion to the high envir­on­mental gain, heat­pump pro­duces hot water with an oper­at­ing cost around 70% cheaper than the pre­vi­ous one, and elim­in­ates an entire supply chain for the fuel which, before, was trans­por­ted to the factory through trucks, which also emitted gases into the atmo­sphere.

In its cafet­eria, for example, Puratos also replaced the ovens and other accessor­ies that used gas by others with tech­no­logy based on elec­tri­city, such as elec­tric induc­tion, which means that fuel is no longer used in any direct or indir­ect process within the facil­ity.

Oilon Chill­Heat heat­pump pro­duces hot water and chilled water, repla­cing part of the work of air con­di­tion­ing and cooling chillers in the indus­trial park, which results in high per­form­ance and oper­a­tional cost optim­iz­a­tion.

“The solu­tion that our partner Oilon brought with the heat pump, the Chill­heat, was an innov­at­ive solu­tion for us, because we were able to end any and all con­sump­tion of fossil fuels in our factory, and Puratos Brasil chocol­ate factory became the first carbon neutral plant within the Puratos group.”, said Fábio Vigário, dir­ector of oper­a­tions at Puratos Brasil.

Puratos now focuses on mon­it­or­ing the imple­ment­a­tion of this project and its rep­lic­a­tion poten­tial in the other units of the group.
Tech­no­logy at service

Oilon Chill­heat heat pump is an equip­ment that enhances the waste heat of a process through the use of a com­pressor coupled to a refri­ger­a­tion circuit. Refri­ger­ant con­dens­a­tion, the cooling tower or the chilled water itself from refri­ger­a­tion equip­ment are rich sources of heat, allow­ing Oilon Chill­Heat to draw large amounts of thermal energy for the purpose of evap­or­at­ing the refri­ger­ant fluid. The use of this heat to heat the process water is the great advant­age of the Oilon heat pump, being able to take advant­age of this thermal exchange of the refri­ger­ant, both in evap­or­a­tion and con­dens­a­tion, making it the most eco­nom­ical equip­ment avail­able on the market, in addi­tion to having the advant­age of the decar­bon­iz­a­tion of the process. Chill­heat can deliver tem­per­at­ures up to 120 degrees celsius.

Heat pump is already pre­pared and adapted to the demands of industry 4.0. Its auto­ma­tion relies on embed­ded IOT tech­no­logy, which allows auto­matic mon­it­or­ing of the equip­ment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in addi­tion to remote access and mon­it­or­ing of the pro­duc­tion and use of the resource. The system also counts the energy pro­duced and con­sumed and manages to compile power­ful energy reports, which allow a high degree of man­age­ment. Fur­ther­more, it allows the con­fig­ur­a­tion of alerts that, in any even­tual abnor­mal­ity or anomaly, are sent digit­ally to those involved. Such mon­it­or­ing allows the anti­cip­a­tion of any problem in its initial or pre­ma­ture stage in an auto­matic and integ­rated way.

In addi­tion to fin­an­cial, envir­on­mental and tech­no­lo­gical gains, the equip­ment comes with a much higher load control than the pre­vi­ous one, with mod­u­la­tion of the com­pressor motors through a fre­quency inverter, thus allow­ing better adapt­a­tion to the vari­ations and sea­son­al­ity of the factory process.”

“Con­trib­ut­ing to a greener and more sus­tain­able world is Oilon’s purpose. Puratos’ Policy demon­strates in prac­tice that energy effi­ciency and sus­tain­ab­il­ity are pillars that can, and should, go hand in hand. The demand for decar­bon­iz­a­tion is for today, and it has been a pleas­ure to help Puratos achieve this goal, says Marcus Libanori, CEO of Oilon South America, which has been devel­op­ing the heat pump market in the region since mid-2017. We have excel­lent ref­er­ences in several seg­ments such as phar­ma­ceut­ical, food, ser­vices, dairy and energy”, he con­cludes.