Heat recovery systems


Standards in energy savings in the plant

Long before many of our competitors ever did, at Gimeco we developed efficient heat recovery systems for the hot dip galvanizing industry, introducing unprecedented standards in energy savings in the plant.

Our heat recovery system is based on recovering residual heat coming from the hot dip galvanizing furnace, which is constantly discharging hot fumes, to heat up the dryer and the pretreatment solutions (degreasing, pickling and fluxing).

Gimeco can customize  these heat recovery systems to optimize energy use, lowering the gas bills quite significantly.

Heat recovery is essentially the ability to reuse some residual heat to transfer it to a cycle where it is needed. This can be typically done in two different ways:

  • by direct exchange, where the original hot fluid is simply circulated against the fluid that needs to be heated, using suitable heat exchangers;
  • by indirect exchange, in which heat is transferred from the original hot fluid to a medium fluid, which is then circulated against the final fluid to be heated, usually deploying two separate exchangers.

Direct exchange is typically used for air to air or air to water exchange. It is the simplest and easiest to manage.

Indirect exchange is on the contrary utilized for triple circuits such as air\superheated water\water, air\diathermic oil\water or air\diathermic oil\air. Despite being more complex, this type of exchange allows the benefits of working with superheated or high temperature mediums.

Gimeco can propose the best solution based on available fluids and temperatures, thanks to an extensive operational experience with thermodynamics and heat exchangers.

Heat recovery systems