Energy, water and environment are the key elements — SwitchMed

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Energy, water and environment are the key elements

Yvan Gravel, founder and director of Fraquemar, our MED TEST II local partner in Morocco, explain us how sustainability brings savings to the manufacturing companies

Can you tell us what Fraquemar do?

Fraquemar is a company specialised in energy, water and the environment that provides consulting and engineering services and supplies equipment. It deals with industrial companies, hotel owners, and public and private sector infrastructure construction companies, as well as with national and international institutions and organisations.

Fraquemar has more than 25 years of experience in Morocco, along with a staff of engineering consultants and experts.

Fraquemar offers a range of applications to help its clients protect the environment, minimise their energy and water consumption, improve the performance of their production processes, or even increase their heat exchange efficiency, by proposing the best technology available.

 

Please introduce yourself

The founder and director of Fraquemar, Yvan Gravel, has been working in the field of energy efficiency for more than 30 years. He was in charge of the Energy Auditing and Management Department at ADS Canada in Montreal, and then of Senegal’s Energy Efficiency Program in Industry (PEEI) from 1986 to 1990 (more than 40 companies were beneficiaries - ESMAP programme of the World Bank).

Between 1990 and 1995, Mr Gravel was the long-term advisor for the GEM (Energy Management in Morocco) project, financed by USAID (various activities: education, training, energy and environmental auditing, etc.).

Lastly, from 2003 to 2007, he was head of the energy upgrade and environmental project for the Sidi Bernoussi industrial zone, on behalf of the Izdihar Association, a project co-financed by the FFEM and GEF (60 beneficiary companies; capacity building for Moroccan executives in energy and environmental management).

 
Fraquemar focuses on three key fields of intervention: energy, water and environment, which allows us to offer industrial companies a complete integrated approach.

Through our unique, integrated approach, we believe that efficiency and cost savings are to be found at the core of processes and of the utilities that supply them. We analyse them globally and take direct, in-depth action on them. We seek to optimise the operation of every plant in a realistic, applicable fashion, always with the goal of increasing the company’s profitability:

  • Consulting & engineering (preliminary diagnostic for project design, detailed project design, DCE, pre-diagnostic analysis, auditing, financial report, recommendations, etc.)
  • Creation of financing application files (FODEP and MDP types)
  • Energy management and monitoring over time of objectives or cost savings achieved
  • Maintenance support

Energy

Whether it is a question of electric power use (compressed air, lighting, pumps, cooling, air conditioning, etc.) or heating (hot water, steam, heat-bearing fluids, furnaces, etc.), Fraquemar offers the best solutions to optimise energy costs. Those solutions may include changing to renewable energy sources.

Water

This comes from various sources (surface, groundwater, deep water, seawater) and thus has varying characteristics that many times have real consequences, often poorly understood, on the means of production. When properly managed, water can also be a major source of cost savings. Whether one wants to improve its quality, minimise its use, recycle it, or treat it for re-use, Fraquemar offers appropriate solutions.

Environment

Fraquemar performs environmental impact assessments, upgrades for compliance with environmental regulations, and clean-up solutions (water treatment plants, FODEP financing, hazardous waste solutions).

 

Conserverie des 2 Mers (C2M), which is a Moroccan fish canning industry, joined the MED TEST programme. What were the benefits that the company obtained?

The implementation of the action plan to which C2M committed itself has served to provide annual savings to the order of $74,000 in energy, water and raw materials, by means of an investment of $120,000, with a resulting average ROI of 19 months. Energy savings represent 65% of the annual cost while savings on water are around 22%. The company also benefited from technical support for the deployment of an EMS (energy management system).

 

At the website, you can read ‘Any manufacturer typically can reduce its energy bill by 10% to 25% with a payback period <2 years’. Please tell us more about this.

Given Fraquemar’s experience in Morocco, proposing a 10-25% reduction in energy and water costs with a pay-back period of less than 2 years is not hard to do. The factors that serve to achieve these levels of reduction are essentially related to utility systems (steam circuit, cooling circuit, compressed air network, lighting, pumping, etc.) that are not well maintained or use outdated technology. This means insulating hot or cold surfaces, detecting and repairing compressed air or steam leaks, improving the combustion output of boilers or installing a variable speed drive on a pump, without overlooking all the reduction actions that can be taken on a company’s production processes by minimising leaks, reducing empty operating runs or by deploying automated regulation. Substantial energy savings can be achieved through the use of an energy recovery system – reheating process water or air using an exchanger on an air or cold compressor, reheating combustion air using stack wall heat, etc.

Energy costs and the costs of the investments to be made are the main factors that lead to quick ROIs. Since Morocco has little self-sufficiency in energy, its costs for electric power, heating oil or water continue to be relatively high.

Example: In 2014, a large milk plant had the benefit of Fraquemar’s services. Results: 24 recommended improvements -> Potential annual savings of 45% on an overall cost (electricity, heating oil and water) of 18,370,000 MAD for an estimated investment of 16,200,000 MAD, i.e. a return on investment of only 21 months.

 

Water is becoming more and more a scarce and valuable resource as population and consumption rise. Please can you explain to us two examples of water savings?

Water is often used as a means of heating or cooling for utilities or production processes. Leaks are often found on the circuits, or some processes have inordinate consumption.

Example 1: In a textile plant, on a printing line, a small, semi-closed circuit serves to continuously clean the belt over which the fabric passes. Water input is regulated by a float valve at the entry to the circuit’s small supply tank. The company’s use of “drinkable� water was approximately 1,500 m3 per day. The audit found that, in the printing section, the float valve had a hole in it and the water was constantly filling the tank and overflowing. Repair and replacement of the float valve served to reduce water use by 600 m3 per day.

Example 2: In a textile plant, the bath ratio for dyeing the fabrics is 1:10. Replacing the dyeing machines with more recent technology served to reduce the bath ratio to 1:4. This meant major water conservation, not to mention the savings on the various chemicals and auxiliary products used in the dyeing in a volume-based ratio, which is not usually the case for the dye.