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Energy Efficiency and Digitalization in the Food Industry

Food Pinch: Flexible Heat Integration is Possible

Food Pinch

The multi-year “Food Pinch” project was successfully completed. The further development of the classic pinch analysis for efficient system operation and optimal investment plans convinced the application companies. They plan to continue using the dynamic pinch control and roll it out to additional systems.

The production of goods in the food industry requires fluctuating heating and cooling capacities and temperature levels over time. This makes it difficult to increase energy efficiency and use low-CO2 energy sources in many companies. The Food Pinch research and development project was launched in 2020 with the aim of developing and testing innovative solutions for the food industry by optimally combining heat and cold flows. Relevant process technologies were also integrated and intelligently connected via the EnEffCo® digital platform. In addition to ÖKOTEC Energiemanagement and the Institute of Thermodynamics at RWTH Aachen University, users Nestlé Wagner, the MAGGI plant in Singen and the Westphalian meat products factory Stockmeyer are also involved in the Food Pinch project.

The project team developed a dynamic pinch analysis that can identify an optimally energy-efficient mode of operation with changing parameters. Furthermore, a demonstrator was developed to influence the control technology and maximize heat integration under changing conditions. The automatic system control EnEffReg® was further developed for this purpose. Savings of 19% were achieved in two groups of systems: On the one hand, in the cooling water supply at Maggi, through direct control of the demonstrator and, on the other hand, in refrigeration at Wagner , which was based on a manual adjustment of the control system based on the results of the demonstrator.

The final event of Food Pinch took place on November 27, 2024 at ÖKOTEC in Berlin. The full final report will be published in early 2025. Special thanks go to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) for funding the project and to Project Management Jülich (PtJ) for its support. Funding reference: 03EN2031A.


The Project Partners and their Contributions

Food Pinch

RWTH Aachen University (LTT)

Dörthe Hagedorn, Hagen Seele and Boyung Jürgens presented the Dynamic Pinch Method

Developed modules, including:

  • Operational optimization: Scheduling of batch processes, consideration of temperature levels
  • Investment optimization: HENDling, Dyn2Heat, Rapid Monte Carlo Analysis

ÖKOTEC

  • Knut Grabowski managed the overall project and led the development of the ÖKOTEC indicator methodology
  • Knut Grabowski, Philipp Krebs and Fabian Gnegel developed the dynamic pinch control based on the EnEffCo® EnEffReg® module
  • Adrian Schödl managed and presented the demonstration projects of the control system in systems in operation, which Sylvia Jacobi carried out

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Knut Grabowski Team Energieeffizienz-Controlling

Knut Grabowski

Head of EnEffCo® Research & Development


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Flexible Wärmeintegration mit der dynamischen Pinch-Analyse

Flexible heat integration with dynamic pinch analysis

The food industry requires a lot of heat and cold. The aim of the Food Pinch research project is to use heat and cold more efficiently and to put waste heat flows to further use. Researchers are developing and testing a dynamic pinch analysis for this purpose.

Image: Shutterstock 1810445956/ noomcpk