Sustainable Solutions in Energy and Environment
Thermax Group is a USD 1 billion company, providing a range of engineering solutions to the energy and environment sectors.
They are headquartered in Pune, India and operate globally through 19 International offices, 12 Sales & Service offices and 12 manufacturing facilities – 7 of which are in India and 5 overseas.
Their presence spans 75 countries across Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, CIS countries, Europe, USA and South America.
The group consists of 5 domestic wholly owned subsidiaries, 13 overseas wholly owned subsidiaries and 2 joint ventures.
Tuning to the needs of the day, all their solutions are innovative, energy-efficient, environment-friendly and easy to operate.
Solutions Suite – Innovative and Eco-friendly
Thermax’s solutions specifically focus on:
- Heating equipment – using a variety of fuels, including biomass
- Absorption chillers – fired by waste heat or steam
- Power and captive cogeneration plants
- Waste heat recovery units
- Waste water management systems – pre-treatment, waste water treatment and chemical conditioning of water, sewage effluent treatment and recycling
- Air pollution control systems
- Performance improving chemicals
- Solar based heating, cooling and power
Product Range – Diverse and Efficient
From their experience of over four decades in the energy sector, they offer a range of boilers and thermal oil heaters, energy chillers and customized products like exhaust gas boilers. Thermax absorption chillers have found a niche in green energy systems in Europe and Australia. they also help industries reduce energy costs by shifting to abundantly available, alternate energy such as biomass.
Industry-specific Solutions – Clean and Green
Thermax provides industries with clean technologies that recover pollutants; thereby reducing their hazardous impact on the environment. Today, many iron & steel, cement, fertilizer and chemical industries reduce emissions using Thermax air pollution control systems.
Industries in the US and Japan consistently use Thermax hi-grade ion exchange resins for specialised applications.
Technology Partnerships
Over the years, Thermax has formed technology partnerships with global majors, including: Babcock & Wilcox (USA), Kawasaki Thermal Engineering (Japan), Balcke Durr (Germany), Eco-Tech (Canada) and Georgia Pacific (USA).
In 1992, Steam Team became agents for Thermax Ltd.One of Thermax’s strengths is the application of boiler technology using low grade coal and biomass fuels. The traditional boiler design based on clean coal burnt on a chain grate was perfect until coal became inconsistent in size and increasingly more expensive; and wood or biomass a viable and desirable fuel. What worked for coal was highly inefficient for wood or duff. The Thermax solution was to design and build purpose-designed boilers able to handle a wide variety of fuels with excellent efficiencies.
Steam Team has installed and maintained these boilers into a wide variety of industries. Because they are specifically designed for the fuel used, they are very efficient and give excellent paybacks. The best example is a payback of 5 weeks for a 4.5 tonne wood boiler.
In 2000, Steam Team set up operations in South Africa. Shortly after this, Steam Team formed a partnership with a company called Spenomatic (Pvt) Ltd, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Spenomatic is the largest process heat company in East, west and Central Africa. At any point in time, they are in the process of installing 30 or more boilers. They have just successfully installed and commissioned a 2 MW CHP plant with a 20 tonne biomass boiler. Steam Team and Spenomatic complement each other in offering products and solutions across Africa. Steam Team has complete access to Spenomatic’s service facility and personnel to reinforce its own team.
When, Thermax established a Services and Solutions business division Steam Team allied with them to conduct energy audits for a wide range of industries – Food, Tea, petrochemical, textile, chemical, breweries, solvent extraction. Audits help industry reduce energy costs, besides the benefits of reducing pollution and early preventive maintenance. Steam Team also had access to and sold Thermax’s products in the boiler house namely steam traps, control valves, level gauges, level controllers, condensate pumps and a host of other spares for any type of boiler be it either supplied by Thermax or any other manufacturer.
Thermax acquired RIFOX – Hans Richter GmbH, Spezialarmaturen in 2012. Since then Steam Team has been actively canvassing and selling RIFOX’S innovative solutions to the boiler industry in Southern Africa.
An area of keen interest for Steam Team is that of co-generation and tri-generation. There are always opportunities in plants to generate electricity and steam, and chilled water. The problem has been the artificially low prices charged for electricity, especially in South Africa. Until now, as many companies in South Africa face the grim reality of inconsistent, uncertain electrical supply. And the price for electricity is rising and set to rise further. At least one steam supplier has gone out of business recently as the price of electricity became uneconomic.