Pilot sites

The  demonstration activities will be performed in a Keraben production site located in Nules (Spain). There are 350.000 m2 of facilities with a total production capacity of 14.5 Mm2. There are 2 plants, one for porcelain stoneware and one for wall porcelain or porous porcelain. In each plant there are 7 and 6 production lines for the drying process. In each line, the atomized powder coming from the spray-drying process is pressed according to a certain shape and size and then goes to the dryer. The 7 lines in the porcelain stoneware plant work with vertical dryers and in the porous porcelain plant there are 4 vertical dryers and 2 horizontal.

There are several models of vertical dryers from SACMI and SITI working at different powers, between 60-125 KW. Horizontal dryers are SACMI ECP 3070/22,6 166 KW. In the vertical ones, the pieces are deposited in trays, which ascend along the press side, circulating in a channel together with hot air supplied by a natural gas burner. The temperature in the different areas of the dryer is adjusted by means of registers that communicate both channels and, in general, by varying the temperature of the hot air at the burner outlet. The normal working temperature ranges between 180 and 200 ºC, with a drying cycle estimated between 45 and 60 minutes, and the humidity at the outlet is between 0.6 and 0.9%. The dried pieces descend on the opposite side, unloading onto the glazing lines. In multi-plane horizontal dryers, air is blown and sucked on each plane, above and below the tiles, keeping the maximum possible amount of hot air under recirculation. Average thermal consumption for dryers is around 3.8 MKW.h per year.

The demonstration facility in Dinard (France) is the R&D Process center for the whole Roullier Group. The pilot facility (about 400 m²) is divided into two main parts, which mimic the Roullier Group plants. At a low scale, each step of the plant is tested in 40 kg batches. At large scale, a fully continuous plant is able to produce nearly all the Roullier Group products at 300 – 1000 kg/h.

The demonstration sites will be both in a stationary pilot plant at Center for Development of Renewable Energies in Soria for the commissioning and testing of the prototype (task 13.1), and in a portable distillation industrial plant in different production sites as stated in task 13.2 (Validation of the portable prototype). The portable distillation plant is formed by two trailers. The distillation trailer is integrated by 2 distillation vessels with a diameter of 1,400 mm and height of 2,800 mm, a condenser tank of 1200 mm  diameter and 2,500 mm height with a spiral coil of 7.5 m2 with 42 m in length, and a water-water exchanger located at the top of the condenser and formed by an exchange surface of 1.5 m2, with 38 tubes. All the elements are built in stainless steel 304. The steam is provided by a steam boiler 300 kg/h, 0.5 bar, fueled with biomass (pellets, almond shell, olive stone) and located in a second trailer, together with the cooling tower and the water treatment system for the boiler. The stationary pilot distillation pilot plant is formed by a 1.8 m3 stainless steel still, a biomass boiler to produce up to 120 kg/h steam (0.5 bar), a cooling system with a double cooling coil and a stainless steel Florentine flask to separate the essential oil and the hydrolate.