Waste Heat Utilization in Canning Plant

Berkeley Lab and Del Monte Foods were awarded funding by the Food Industry Energy Research (FIER) Grant Program, which is part of the Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER) of the California Energy Commission, to demonstrate how can cooker processing for fruits and vegetables common in California industry can be made significantly more energy efficient through the appropriate application of existing technology in a cost effective manner that supports or enhances production needs. The objectives of this project are to:

1. Perform an overall system evaluation and analysis on a can cooker system common to the fruit and vegetable processing industry. This will identify opportunities for system optimization, including the potential for improving the system energy efficiency of the system by using waste heat to provide process cooling;
2. Identify, design, and commission a demonstration project for the system;
3. Conduct post-installation analysis, verify energy savings, document reliability of the system improvement. In addition, develop a simple technology applicability tool to help users identify plants/applications where this technology can be replicated; and
4. Publish the results of these analyses and make the tool available to promote adoption of industry best practices for can cooker systems.

Results are expected in mid 2007.

Enterprise Energy Management System

Berkeley Lab also provided technical assistance to Del Monte Foods in 2005 to specify and install an Enterprise Energy Management (EEM) system at Del Monte’s fruit-canning facility in Modesto. The EEM is designed to provide the Del Monte facility with state-of-the art monitoring capability for optimizing energy usage of its water, compressed air, gas, electrical, and steam systems. As a result, Del Monte has already reduced plant energy usage and demand charges. The EEM installation received funding from the US Department of Energy and National Association of State Energy Officials as part of a food industry pilot project for assessing comprehensive energy efficiency management technologies.