Environment: Evaporation systems script
As a consequence of the increase in the demand for proteins, above all in developed
countries, meat consumption accounts for 60% of the protein diet. Over the last
20 years, meat production has increased by 127%, with the pig sector showing the
way.
In Spain today, the meat production sector is one of the largest in the food industry,
demonstrated by the fact that of the 77,810 million euros spent on food in Spain
in 2005, 21.4% to meat and its derivatives, well ahead of sectors such as fish (13.3%)
and milk products (10.7%). The average national consumption of meat and meat products
in 2005 was greater than 65.8 kilos per person, an increase of 0.7% on 2004.
Pork accounts for nearly 60% of the total meat produced in our Spain. With a production
that surpasses three million tons, Spain is the fourth largest producer of this
type of meat in the world, behind China, the United States and Germany.
This has meant an intensification of pig farming, which are increasingly get closer
to urban centres. The high degree of pasty or semi-liquid waste, derived from cleaning
with water, has created a new environmental problem due to the difficulty in handling
it. Up till now the solution has been to dump it on the land where it filtres into
the soil. As well as contaminating subterranean water, producing ponds and smells
that affect urban centres, they make work difficult in these neighbourhoods and
sometimes affect tourism.
During its first six months of life, a pig produces an average of on ton of waste.
Spain produces 40 million pigs a year, with an organic waste equivalent of a human
population one hundred millionn inhabitants. Spain produces 52 million tons pig
waste (1.2 m3 per pig), although according to the calculations of the EU, officially
each fattened pig produces 2.15m3 per year. To produce a pork fillet of 140 grams,
the pig must produce 1000 cubic centimetres of waste.
As the solid waste is not very difficult to handle as well as being of agricultural
value, most research , both public and private, has gone into looking for solutions
the waste that contains a percentage of liquid, with the aim of reducing, recycling
and re-using it.
On a different note, the demand for energy has shot up. The EU uses more and more
energy, while at the same time increasing its dependence. Today it imports 50% of
its needs and according to the predictions of the Green Book concerning the security
of energy supply, by the year 2030 this dependence will rise to 70% and with an
even greater emphasis on petroleum.
For this reason, alternative souces of energy are being sought. With the adequate
legislation it is considered that other forms of energy in use in Spain could increase
by 63% by the year 2010, with a participation in the electricity market of 14% by
that date.
HRS Spiratube has the technology that permits the dehydration of pig waste through
multi-effect
evaporation, using the residual heat of co-generation. The components of
the evaporation plant work using the heat of gases from the motors that are used
to generate electicity.
The final result of the evaporation is a dry fertilizer in the form of small cylinders.
Thus we obtain water, dehydrated fertilizer and CO2 which is used in the production
of greenhouse tomatoes and electricity used for urban consumption.
The most important part of HRS Spiratube are the
Unicus® evaporators, rough surface heat exchangers with a continuous scraping
of the walls that eliminates the possibility of an accumulation of dirt deposits,
thus allowing continuous work, the key to the working of the electricity production
plant.
As a result we solve not only the environmental problems derived from pig waste,
but also we contribute to solving part of the energy problems.