Arla saves 4096 kWh of energy with help from Grundfos

Grundfos recently supplied and installed new intelligent pumps for Arla Westbury’s dairy sector in the UK, resulting in annual savings of 4096 kWh of energy and 33.81 tonnes of CO2 for its ice and chilled water systems. Arla’s Westbury site has pumps installed for chilled and frozen water applications, process water feed and steam boiler feed. At the end of 2020, Westbury contacted Grundfos to help optimise its chilled and frozen water applications. In this way, Grundfos carried out energy assessments (Energy Check Advanced) to find the real energy consumption in the system, which involved placing sensors in the system to obtain real data from the existing configuration.

Measurements made by Grundfos quickly showed that the design parameters for the existing pumps were way off their curve and inefficient. The result was a detailed report that showed how optimising and downsizing the existing system would generate energy savings and process improvements through better control and operating modes. The Grundfos team then advised on the selection of intelligent pumps and controls, and delivered an end-to-end turnkey system for chilled and frozen water, including installation, pipework and commissioning and validation of savings.

For the chilled water system, this meant replacing the three old 55 kW pumps with three new NB 80-200 37 kW pumps, including frequency converters. In the frozen water system, the three old 22 kW pumps were replaced by three new 7.5 kW TPE 200-70 pumps with built-in frequency inverters.

With the optimisation of the chilled and frozen water circuits, Grundfos’ next project at Arla Westbury was to upgrade its boiler feed pumps. Steam boilers are part of many processes in dairy production and are important for the operation of the evaporators, where steam is the main part of that process. This work resulted in annual savings in boiler feed with new pumps of 4096 kWh per year and 33.81 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

Find out more at: www.grundfos.com/br/about-us/cases/arla-achieves-energy-savings-in-critical-water-supply-systems