To reduce energy consumption and costs, the J.R. Simplot Company completed a project several years ago that increased the efficiency of the steam system at its potato processing plant in Caldwell, Idaho. The project was based on an evaluation, performed using the Steam System Assessment Tool (SSAT), by Bill Moir, a Qualified Specialist with Steam Engineering Inc. The SSAT was developed for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Industrial Technologies Program Best Practices. The Caldwell plant improvements are saving 52,000 MMBtu and 526,000 kilowatt-hours annually. Energy and maintenance cost savings total $329,000 per year.
Since total project costs were $373,000, the simple payback is less than 14 months. Similar efficiency measures were replicated at other Simplot facilities, following analyses conducted using the SSAT. Those energy efficiency improvements are yielding natural gas savings of 176,000 MMBtu per year.
The Caldwell facility is one of Simplot’s largest;it produces approximately 270 million pounds of frozen french fries per year. The site is equipped with three natural-gas-fired, water-tube boilers. Two are rated for 70,000 pounds per hour (lb/hr), and the third is rated for 60,000. Steam is generated at 275 pounds per square inch gauge (psig) saturated. Steam is important to the plant’s production processes because it directly supports potato peeling, blanching and frying tasks.
In the wake of the project’s success, Simplot saw the SSAT as an effective, “common denominator” type of tool for evaluating opportunities to improve all the company’s steam systems. Management, therefore, established a corporate policy to institutionalize the use of the SSAT at all Simplot facilities using steam. To date, the SSAT has been used at eight other Simplot facilities, and the resulting analyses are updated annually. Uniform tools and methodologies such as this one can easily be adopted in any industrial facility that uses steam.
