Energy savings and heat efficiency in the paper industry: A case study of a corrugated board machine

The paper presents the improvement of energy management in a steam system used for corrugated board production. The system consists of a steam boiler (fired with natural gas), steam and condensate pipelines and a corrugated board production installation (steam consumer). In the existing system, the boiler works in unison with an open condensate tank. This tank is responsible for energy losses due to secondary steaming. Therefore, a system of a closed tank has been proposed to eliminate these energy losses. The coefficients of thermal performance and the energy losses in both cases (open and closed tank) are compared. The study shows that the losses of the closed steam system are always lower than those of the open system. The coefficient of performance could be increased by about 8% by the proposed modernization. The recovery of expenses for modernization should be very quick, taking place within a year.