Back to Partnership Profiles Index

Doane’s Pet Care

Muscatine, IA

Scope of Work:

This pet food facility’s process water has very high mineral content because it is sourced from local wells. The commercial gas-fired heat-exchangers, providing critical process hot water, would foul due to scale in 6-8 weeks. The cleaning of the heat exchanger required one-day of downtime which limited production output. This shutdown was required 8 times per year.

Upgrade Projects:

  • Armstrong conducted an analysis that first reviewed whether steam or gas-fired hot water heaters would be the more effective technology to remedy the problem.
  • Armstrong determined that a direct contact gas-fired hot water heater with integral source tank would solve the problem. Additionally, Armstrong recommended and engineered a heat recovery project to reclaim BTU’s from excess process water being sent to drain. This water was re-routed to feed into the 1 million BTU Armstrong Flo-Direct® hot water heater.

Time of Installation:

The hot water heater began supplying process hot water in September, 2003.

Benefits:

  • No required shutdowns to clean the Direct-Contact Gas-fired Flo-Direct® unit versus 8 annual one-day shutdowns with the past hot water heater.
  • The Flo-Direct® hot water heater is 99% efficient versus 85% efficiency of the previously installed unit.
  • The innovative engineering for the heat recovery of the excess process water provided $8,000 in annual energy savings as well as unspecified sewer savings.
  • Doane’s was so satisfied with the performance of the Armstrong Flo-Direct™ that the heater has been installed at other facilities.