Merck Serono SPA

Industry
Inside pharmaceutical factories, environments must have a controlled temperature and humidity, not only in the production departments but also inside research and development laboratories.
The steam used must also have a high degree of pureness both for the sterilization and the product packaging processes.
These needs make the industry highly energy-intensive and therefore in search of continuous improvements on overall plant efficiency.

Customer
Invest in a new thermal plant to reduce the costs of thermal energy generation, simultaneously reduce polluting emissions into the atmosphere, and without interrupting the production cycle.

The new thermal system
Phase 1: As the first phase of work, we designed and subsequently replaced the old waste heat exchanger with our latest WHB boiler for the recovery of hot fumes resulting from electricity production.
Phase 2: Once the WHB installation was complete, we moved on to the thermal plant.
At this point, in order not to interrupt production during the revamping phase, we have designed, together with our partners, a temporary thermal power plant.
The temporary steam boilers, installed outdoors, temporarily replaced the existing boilers, covering the steam needs of the entire plant, and remaining operational for the 3 months necessary to complete the work inside the thermal power plant.
Phase 3: We now focused on the new thermal plant and on how to meet Merck's demands for efficiency and emission reduction.
For the new plant, we chose to install 2 GX-2000 steam boilers with 3.400 kg/h of steam capacity, equipped with the GSS-72 safety system for continuous 72-hour unsupervised operation, and a vertical economizer for feedwater pre-heating.
Combined with the steam boilers we opted for 2 progressive Low NOx two-stage modulating burners, thermophysical degasser, waste collection tank, manifolds for steam distribution at various pressures, and PLC electronic system for data transmission and cascade management.

Results
Thanks to the increase in efficiency provided by the new thermal plant, we have found a reduction in CNG consumption of 158.000 Sm3 / year (about 132 TOE), equivalent to an annual saving of about € 46.000.
The increase in global efficiency has also led to lower CO2 emissions into the atmosphere of about 320 tons per year, reducing the environmental impact of the entire production plant.