JBT Corporation announced a sustainable Energy Recovery System (ERS) designed to seamlessly integrate into new and existing JBT Steam Water Spray (SWS) retort systems. With the updated ERS technology, SWS customers benefit from additional cost savings and up to a reported 30% energy savings, without extending their thermal process cycles.

Used for product sterilization, retorts are at the heart of many shelf-stable food processing lines such as ready-meals, baby food, pet food, soups, sauces, canned vegetables, milk, fruit juices, non-carbonated beverages, tea, coffee and more. As sustainability in food and beverage operations becomes increasingly important, producers across these product markets have an opportunity to make improvements with the ERS technology, says the company.

“As energy prices continue to rise, it is important for producers to be forward-thinking when it comes to their technology and about how their solutions will continue to meet their needs, be cost effective, and reduce their carbon footprint,” says Rick Wilson, global product line director at JBT Corporation. “The sustainability benefits that ERS offers are the biggest reason for customers to upgrade their existing SWS retorts.”

Using hot and cold-water tanks that transfer energy between the come-up and cooling portions of the retort’s thermal process, the ERS extracts energy during the cooling phase. This energy is then utilized for heating during the come-up phase. By optimizing energy recovery through an integrated system of software and hardware, ERS can be engineered to order and be optimized to individual customer products. It is fully compatible and specifically integrated with all JBT SWS retort systems. Further, the JBT supplied control system manages and monitors the ERS performance.