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.