Steam for Textile Industry
Reference: Textile Industry Giant’s Gildan Plants
Location: Rio Nance, Honduras
Gildan is a leading Canadian multinational company that manufactures high-quality basic clothing, with production facilities in the Dominican Republic and Honduras. Its industrial activity requires a high saturated steam flow. This used to be produced by heavy oil boilers, which drove the company to face high energy costs and resulted in a larger carbon footprint.
In the Rio Nance plant in Honduras, Gildan produces 150 tons per hour of vapor using six boilers of 25 tons per hour each. The efficiency of the boilers is 87 percent. Gildan saved considerable money from switching to biomass. In the period 2010–2013, all of the steam produced by heavy oil combustion was replaced with “green” steam produced by biomass combustion, allowing Gildan to reduce its energy invoices significantly and to reduce its carbon footprint massively.
System Specification: Six 25t/h steam boilers, 16 bar(g) design pressure.
Fuel: A mixture of different types of biomass is used as fuel, including waste from the plant’s own processes, African palm byproducts, king grass from energy crops, and wood sawdust.
Fuel Feed System: Two semiautomatic cranes collect biomass from the silo and deliver the biofuel to the boiler hoppers.
Flue Gas Cleaning: Double multicyclone, with 72 cyclones each made in a special execution with hatches for cleaning.
Justsen Boiler Type: Saturated Steam Boiler JUE-TDC-F.
Special Equipment: Two-pass vertical economizer.
