Heat transfer equipment firm HRS Heat Exchangers has been awarded an eur 1 million grant towards the development of new evaporation technology and processes to reduce environmental waste.
The firm, which specialises in plant for the process industries, received its funding from the EC Research Executive Agency, under its Seventh Programme.
Kleijn Arnold, technical manager for HRS Evaporation Systems, explains that pig manure causes huge environmental problem across Europe. So the project is aimed at developing a low-cost, integrated solution to reduce pig slurry volumes and also minimise pollutant emissions and energy consumption.
He says that HRS will be working with the Tecnologias Avanzadas Inspiralia (ITAV) non-profit research and technology development group in Spain to develop the Unicus scraped surface heat exchanger, designed for high-fouling and viscous fluid applications.
"In this project, HRS will take its current scraped surface evaporation technology and develop better ways to optimise the performance of its evaporators and make them more economical, to treat pig manure," states Arnold.
Unicus is already a successful plant technology, with the scraping action keeping the heat transfer surface clean and so maintaining heat transfer rates. Arnold says this allows the Unicus to concentrate slurries to levels where traditional plant fails.
