Norit Recognized with Energy Conservation Award
April 10, 2006 - Norit makes activated carbon from East Texas lignite. We heat the lignite in the presence of steam and air to create incredibly porous carbon particles with an immense surface area. We also produce a very hot flue gas. We capture much of the flue gas heat in boilers that produce steam for our plant. We use the steam as a raw material for the reaction. We also use the steam to power plant equipment, including a 2500 KVA electric generator. The plant regularly uses more than 2500 KVA of electricity, and so the generator by itself cannot reliably supply all plant power. To accommodate this limit, we used the generator to power certain circuits within the plant and relied on the electric company to supply the rest of our needs. To ensure the reliability of the power, we had to choose a combination of circuits with a total electric load significantly less than the capacity of the generator. We had to ensure that any fluctuation in load would not exceed the capacity of the generator. As a result we would regularly "dump" high-pressure steam and purchase more than 10 million KwH of electricity per year.
P2 Application :
In 2002, Norit decided to synchronize our generator with the electric utility power we purchased. Using sophisticated electric controls and mechanical switches, we could match the frequency and voltage of our generator to those of the public utility's alternating current. This accomplished we could power all of our circuits using the two power sources in parallel. We could fully load the generator and use the public utility power only when necessary. Our goal was to reduce net electrical needs (purchases) to less than 4.3 million KWH per year.
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Total Cost Savings: $166,666.00
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Comments: payback period of the project was less than two years and the savings from reduced material or energy usage was >$500,000 over three years.
Details of Reductions
Source: TCEQ.
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