INTERGEN: COGENERATION AND NEW ENERGY FOR THE MULTINATIONAL PROCOS
Simultaneous supply of electricity and heat to decrease production costs and CO2 emissions in the chemical-pharmaceutical industry
October, Lomagna (Lecco) – Intergen the energy division of IML Group founded in 1987, has installed a new cogeneration system at the Procos plant in Cameri.
Procos has been in business since 1945 and since 2006 has been part of the Japanese multinational CBC Co., Ltd. The company specialises in the development, production and sales of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API). A cutting edge constantly expanding company, with headquarters in Novara, it opted for cogeneration at its Cameri plant, an area of approximately 110,000 square meters, to make its production cycle more efficient and to pursue the dual aim of reducing production costs and CO2 air pollution.
Processing within the plant requires high amounts of electricity and heat, the latter in the form of steam, hot water and chilled water. To meet these energy needs, the business unit of the IML Group designed and installed a trigeneration unit equipped with a natural gas TCG2020V12 (250 NOX) model MWM engine, with a power equal to 1200 kWe.
The capacity to customise the plants, always taking into consideration the specific needs of every production company, has made Intergen an important point of reference on the national energy scene and a strategic partner for companies working in various sectors. For the Procos plant a project was created using the scrupulous needs of the Japanese group as guidelines to meet a growing energy demand from the new production department. The plant was also engineered to be able to contain an additional cogeneration system of the same power. This set-up will allow the company to install a second trigeneration system to handle all future energy needs of new possible expansions of the production areas.
The heart of Intergen cogenerators are MWM engines and the Lecco company has been the exclusive distributor for them for 30 years. The 2020 range model installed at Procos is one of the most efficient on the market. The electricity output reaches 42.3% and heat output from recoverable energy is 44.5% for a total plant of 86.8%, a very high value for the industry. In addition, the output temperature of the exhaust is around 50° higher than competitor engines which contributes to a higher quality heat production.
The generated electricity is used for plant actuators and utilities. 544 kWt are extracted from the engine exhaust, through a heat recovery unit, that supplies a generator to produce 830 kg/h of steam, later put in the plant distribution network that operates at 12 bar. Heat in the form of hot water is recovered for the engine cooling circuit for a total of 722 kWt. Part of this water in turn supplies an absorption refrigerator unit, also supplied by Intergen, that produces chilled water at 7°C for 530 kWf.
The plant was created based on a “customised” concept, respecting all of the customer’s needs. Intergen was also in charge of making all of the interconnections with existing internal networks and dividing the components into different locations to optimise the limited space available in the plant: The cogenerator components were then soundproofed to comply with the current limits of 65 dB(A) at 10 metres.
