Next to the financial and economic crisis, climate change is currently to top issue in public discussions. Since climate change is mainly blamed on CO2 emissions, reducing them is an important global objective.

The two Rhein Chemie plant engineers Hans Kasper and Gregor Hilleke, who are responsible for technical maintenance of the chemicals equipment in the Mannheim plant, show that environmental awareness can be turned into cash especially in difficult economic times. Sharp increases in energy prices over the last few years gave the engineers the idea to reclaim heat from the flue gas of the thermal exhaust air purification unit and use it to generate hot water.

Since their daily responsibilities leave little time to develop such ideas, both of them thought the concept through and worked out a lot of details in their spare time. They were ready in the fall of 2008. The concept for the utilisation of flue gas to heat boiler feed water was complete and, after an economic and technical evaluation, ready for implementation.

Since the thermal exhaust air purification unit runs around the clock most of the year, important preparations and conversion work had to be completed during the shutdown at the end of the year. This ensured that the installation of new equipment and piping could be completed this summer – during the ongoing operation of the unit.

According to the timeline, the two-stage heat recovery unit is to be commissioned this fall. From that point forward, the investment of EUR 160,000 will result in energy cost reductions of approximately EUR 180,000 per year. But not only energy costs will be reduced. CO2 emissions, which previously corresponded to the exhaust of 180 cars per year, will also be eliminated in the future.