Heat recovery bonanza

Mar 5 2009 by Graeme King, The Journal

Hadrian says the grant funding available for its heat recovery system means it can pay for itself inside two years, and after that, it can help to reduce a business’s water heating costs by as much as 75%.

They say the system should be reliable as it does not contain moving parts, but one complication is that it may require planning permission to get solar panels installed. Richard Gibb farms with his brother Dennis at Eachwick Red House Farm near Ponteland.

He has just seen the heat recovery system installed and is optimistic about making savings to benefit the profitability of his farm’s dairy herd.

He said: “We are doing this because of the rising price of energy, and being able to do some recycling is a good thing too.

“The amount you can save varies from farm to farm, but the figure of 75% on water heating is possible. Obviously the grant transforms the economics of it. There is a form to fill in, but Business Link was very helpful with that.

“However, even though it’s a help, it’s only a small proportion of our total energy bill. We look to save money wherever possible. Everybody in the industry is looking at all sorts of measures.

“There is a lot of talk about anaerobic digestion at the moment – that would be a major step for investment.”

HOW IT WORKS

HEAT recovery systems work by recovering waste heat from a farm’s refrigeration system used for cooling milk, then using the energy from that process to heat water used for cleaning milking equipment.

With the strict hygiene standards in place for milk production, dairy farmers need to clean out their equipment with boiling water after every milking session.

Hadrian’s heat recovery system can get water to a temperature of 60 or 70 degrees celsius, which means new energy is only required to get it to 100 degrees, making a big saving each day.

The system can also be linked up to solar panels to further enhance its efficiency, so the two energy sources complement each other with the solar working during the day and the refrigeration heat recovery working mainly at night and early morning.

Hadrian says the systems they have installed so far can recover more than 50% of waste refrigeration heat.