Nestle's heat recovery success driven by Kobelco compressors
Water heated by recovered heat from oil-free air compressors
The Nestlé factory in Tulare, California uses compressed air in a wide range of applications. While recovering heat from water-cooled compressors is fairly common, the compressors in the Nestlé factory are air-cooled. That required a creative solution to capture the heat and use it to heat process water.
The project began in the mid-1990s, when Nestlé began a phased replacement of its existing oil-free reciprocating compressors, which were experiencing unacceptably high maintenance costs and downtime.