Bakkavor Meals

13th July 2018 — Bakkavor Meals

Babcock Wanson has provided Bakkavor Meals London with a highly efficient solution to both heat supply and odour abatement for its frying facilities at its Park Royal, North West London premises.

Bakkavor Meals Benefits fom Babcock Wanson Expertise

Bakkavor Meals London is an award winning manufacturer of ready meals, ethnic snacks and dips. The company - and its predecessor, Katsouris - has relied on Babcock Wanson’s heat processing equipment and expertise for more than 30 years.

This latest project has seen Babcock Wanson work closely with Bakkavor to understand its needs and develop a solution to meet its combined heat and odour abatement requirements.

The result is the installation of two COMBI 4000 Recuperative Thermal Oxidisers and a Thermal Fluid Heater with the complete system designed and commissioned by Babcock Wanson.

Exhaust Gas from the frying process can be unpleasant to smell and needs to be treated. For Bakkavor Meals London, whose processing facilities are located in a densely populated urban area, removing the odour is essential and something the company takes very seriously.

Highly efficient solution to both heat supply and odour abatement

The most effective method to achieve this is thermal oxidation. Pollutant gases are heated to high temperatures - 850°C in this instance - in a combustion chamber and are fully oxidised before being discharged to atmosphere as a harmless gas. Each Oxidiser burns up to 4000 kg/h of fryer exhaust and in doing so recover valuable heat to thermal fluid to heat the production line thereby recycling the energy back to the process.

The recovered heat is also used to produce steam for processing needs and to heat washdown water therefore helping to meet the sites total demand in an efficient manner. The Thermal Fluid Heater supply to the heat the fryers is automatically adjusted to suit the process through the use of software specifically developed for this process, thereby ensuring the product quality demanded by Bakkavor is met without any problems

In addition to COMBI 4000 recuperative Thermal Oxidisers Babcock Wanson also fitted a TBC600B Thermal Fluid Heater as top up to meet the peak process demand and a backup system.

Babcock Wanson offers a complete range of products and services for boiler houses and other process heating needs, from steam boilers, thermal fluid heaters, rapid steam generators and hot water boilers to VOC and odour treatment by thermal oxidation, water treatment or process air heating solutions. The company aims to help optimise customer’s energy production with high quality products and efficient service.

Customer Testimonials

 — Loucas Antoniou, Engineering Manager at Bakkavor Meals London

“The Thermal Oxidiser is the most efficient way of removing any smells and it’s also very straightforward to use. We have been a customer of Babcock Wanson for many years and have always enjoyed a good service.”

 — Carbon Trust Annual Report 2009/10

“A major carbon footprint reduction will be achieved when the scheme currently in progress to change the main boiler fuel from heating oil to gas is completed in summer 2010. This £900k project will reduce our carbon emissions via energy usage by around 15% by removing the need to use heavy fuel oil, as the new boiler plant will use natural gas as its main fuel source.”

 — Webster & Horsfall

“What we hadn’t expected initially though is the level of control the new system provides us with; it’s amazing. It alerts us to any potential issues, is easy to maintain (no annual statutory inspection is required) and is quick to respond. All that and it doesn’t take up much room.”

 — Peter Connolly, Production Engineer at Vacu-Lug

“The ESM 2000 installation, together with an ongoing programme of process plant lagging and steam trap maintenance, has enabled us to significantly reduce our gas usage and cushion the company against rising gas prices.”

 — Dave Scrivens, Facilities Manager at Plastic Omnium

“Babcock Wanson’s expertise and ability to provide a whole package made them the leading contender for this project. On further investigation, their proposal was also commercially viable, which sealed the deal.”

 — Denis Kelly, Engineering & Construction Manager at Stolthaven Dagenham

“The Thermal Fluid Heaters themselves were ideal for this project as they are based on mature technology and are well proven in the field. They are robust and also require very little maintenance.”

 — Ian McQuarrie, Engineering Manager at Puredrive

“During my three years here, the Steam Generators and Thermal Fluid Heaters have worked flawlessly. Babcock Wanson carries a good name in the business for both quality and equipment longevity. Their knowledge, company wide, is exceptional and the whole package from installation through to service is managed professionally.”

 — Jason Hall, J&A Young Engineering Manager

“We had estimated our steam requirements, but Babcock Wanson had the experience to understand that we had underestimated this. In fact, the erratic nature of the steam loads would have been impossible to meet under our existing spec. Babcock Wanson was able to identify this as well as provide a very energy efficient solution with a number of enhanced features”.

 — Lee Bullen, Corrugated Services Manager at Board24

“It’s running very well, both easy to use and efficient. The service from Babcock Wanson has also been very good.”

 — Peter Shrimpton, Engineering Projects Manager at Bridgnorth Aluminium Ltd

"We were unfamiliar with Babcock Wanson, but we’ve had no problems with it whatsoever; you simply switch it on and it works – simple as that! The service we have received from Babcock Wanson has also been great.”