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Thermax supplies power plants for waste fuels

Thermax has designed a boiler that will generate steam and power using highly polluting distillery waste – spent wash – as fuel. The first such boiler was supplied to a distillery in Karnataka. Distilleries can be highly polluting as 88% of their raw materials result in waste, which is discharged into fields and water bodies. Spent wash is one of the polluting byproducts of the distilling process in molasses-based plants. This brownish liquid waste is spewed out in large quantities; a typical distillery generates about 1,000t every day. Earlier, this waste used to be treated by bio-methanation (producing biogas to be used as fuel in boilers) or converted to manure through bio composting. However, both methods have their drawbacks. Large quantities of waste still remain after biogas production, posing a serious threat to local water bodies; and bio-composting is hampered by the requirement of large tracts of land and by rains that spread pollution. Although Thermax has extensive experience in burning a wide array of waste fuels, spent wash brought its unique set of vexing problems for the boiler and heater group. Besides the high moisture content, spent wash is highly corrosive and contains melting material that makes combustion difficult. These issues were sorted out after extensive R&D trials, and with coal as a support fuel, the 23 TPH Thermax boiler successfully incinerates the spent wash at the Karnataka distillery. An evaporator concentrates the 1,000t waste to around 200t before it is fed into the boiler. Steam from the boiler is used in the distillery processes and also co-generates 2MW of power. This ended its dependence on the power grid.

Revision Date:  7/2/2019

Tags:  312120 - Breweries , Thermax, Boiler, Evaporator, Distillation