Custom Thermal Applications

Case Studies

As experts in providing energy efficient and cost effective hot water and steam solutions, Custom Thermal Applications has many successful installations that we can point to. Some of these are detailed below.

Cargill Foods

Cargill is an international provider of food, agricultural and risk management products and services. With 158,000 employees in 66 countries, the company is a major employer and a leading food processor.

Cargill’s Toronto facility produces beef, pork, poultry and sausage products for retail throughout Ontario.

The Application:

Cargill uses 28,000 gallons of hot water a day at 153° F for plant washdown, laundry, domestic and other needs. Currently these needs were being met by a 4.5 Million BTU water tube boiler fed with water preheated by reclaimed heat from compressor cooler water. 

The Problem:

The water tube boiler was in need of repair or replacement and the thermal efficiencies were in the order of 40-50%, providing a significant opportunity for energy savings.  

The Investigation:

A number of options were considered to replace the steam boiler. These options included:

• A new steam boiler
• A Direct Contact Water Heater

It was determined that in order to provide 28,000 gallons of hot water per day, assuming that up to 6000 gallons would be provided from the existing heat reclaim solution, it would have the following costs.  

After reviewing the vendors, it was determined that QuikWater was the best choice to look more deeply into, so Enbridge and Custom Thermal Applications were brought in to work with Cargill on the cost/benefit analysis.

After looking at the numbers, Cargill chose a QuikWater 2500 (2.5Million BTU) to meet their hot water needs. The cost benefit analysis is below.

Cost Benefit Analysis

*68% Efficiency is a best case scenario for a steam boiler heating hot water through a heat exchanger. Even though the boiler may have an 80% efficiency rating, some efficiency is lost when heating water in the heat exchanger.

Based on the analysis, it was determined that the QuikWater would save Cargill over $45,000 in annual operating costs (gas consumption) compared with a new high efficiency boiler (and over $145,000 over the existing boiler) . Given the price difference between the QuikWater and the high efficiency boiler is less than $40,000, this resulted in an ROI payback of less than 1 year.

After installing the Quikwater unit, Cargill is very happy with the performance and efficiency of the QuikWater unit, that coupled with the clear savings made the QuikWater an obvious choice.