If one looks across a broad range of food and drink manufacturing processes, there is a large demand for high quality, dry steam. One company that knows all about this is Bristol-based Fulton Limited.
From the pasteurisation of milk, dairy and juice products to jet cooking and the cleaning of brewery kegs, the list of applications is almost endless and, says Carl Knight, Fulton's UK and European sales and marketing manager: "Fulton has been heavily involved with steam raising across many industries for many years but since the beginning of 2010, we have been majoring on the food and drink sectors.
"Paul Richards, our managing director, and I both joined Fulton in 2009 with the aim of giving the company new direction and momentum. The combination of a very successful Foodex show earlier this year and a major marketing campaign means we are really beginning to see the rewards, despite the current recession." says Carl.
Steam is the key to many processes in the food and drink sectors and since the new management team came on board, efforts have been targeted at making more innovative products.
One of the traditional markets for Fulton has been the supply of small vertical boilers for the laundry and dry cleaning applications. However, these extremely robust boilers are often seen as inefficient. As a result, these have been redesigned with fully modulating burners to improve both steam output and control, making the boilers more efficient. A heat recovery unit used during TDS blowdown has also been developed to recover up to 90% of the heat that is normally lost as the blowdown water is dumped down the drain. Similarly, a new economiser recovers heat from the flue gases, adding a further 5% to overall efficiency.
Traditionally, boiler installations were erected on site but now Fulton has redesigned its systems and changed their approach to offer complete packaged system. These are built and fully tested at Fulton's facility in Bristol and then broken down into modular units, delivered to site and installed and commissioned. This procedure has proved to quicker and more cost-effective for both Fulton and its customers.
"Fulton is a very customer-focused company that likes to work closely with contractors, consultants and the end-user to ensure that we provide exactly what is needed." says Carl. "We generally find that the customer does not always know exactly how much steam is required for their process, so we can take total ownership of the project and offer advice on size, pressure, etc. to ensure we deliver the right solution."
A good example of a recent Fulton installation is for a KP Snacks facility at Ashby de la Zouch.
KP wanted to decommission the older of two steam packet boilers and install a new, more efficient shell boiler, which was to supply clean, dry steam to the extrusion lines serving their KP Skips, Hula Hoops, Monster Munch, Aliens and other snack production lines.
Fulton's area sales manager, Tony Kemp sold the features and benefits of its RBC Boiler – with its large steam space, low exit steam velocities – together with a flue gas economiser, a Spirax Sarco fully-modulating feed water control system and fully modulating NuWay Burner.
In order to verify the 3-5% fuel savings expected, Fulton has been closely monitoring the readings of the flue gas and feedwater temperatures since the installation was completed at the beginning of June. They also took responsibility for the delivery and installation of the new boiler system, which was completed in just one day. Both Fulton and Spirax Sarco commissioned all elements of the boiler and supplied site training for KP Engineers.
In summing up, Carl Knight says: "We are looking to diversify and offer our customers an improved package, one that looks at the complete solution from steam system design through to connection to existing plant. We are also looking to reverse a current trend and bring our pressure vessel fabrication back to the UK in order to improve our overall efficiency and cost effectiveness."