Improving Condensate Recovery Factor at a Beverage Plant

A prominent beverage and confectionary manufacturer in Mysore, India operates a high-capacity production facility in Mysore, Karnataka. The site features five production lines, each capable of producing 36,000 Bottles Per Hour (BPH) of 200ml PET products. The plant was facing issues with productivity and energy consumption.

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PROBLEM

The facility was struggling with inefficient steam system management across its cooling tunnels, juice pasteurisers, and sugar syrup preparation tanks.

Manual Intervention: The plant relied on conventional float traps that required frequent manual operation of bypass valves for condensate evacuation.
Low Energy Efficiency: The Condensate Recovery Factor (CRF) was suboptimal, stagnating between 40% and 45%.

SOLUTION

To address the bottlenecks of manual condensate draining, seven SOPT (Steam Operated Pump Trap) units were installed. These units were integrated into the cooling tunnel, PET warmer, pasteurizer, sugar syrup preparation tanks, and CIP (Clean-in-Place) systems to ensure efficient condensate return and thermal energy retention.

BENEFITS

Implementing the solutions resulted in immediate, measurable operational improvements:

Increased Recovery: The CRF improved significantly to 60%–65%.
Process Automation: The need for bypass usage was completely eliminated, reducing manual labor and process variability.