Promat cuts energy use on fire protection boards drying process by circa 66%

As part of the company’s ClearChange sustainability programme, Promat has accelerated its decarbonisation targets to deliver fire protection solutions with lower levels of embodied carbon in order to support the construction of more sustainable buildings. This includes reducing operational carbon within the manufacturing process itself.

Identifying that the most energy-intensive aspect of manufacturing fire protection boards is the drying process on a major production line, which is responsible for around 60% of the manufacturing stage’s carbon footprint, Promat has introduced new technology to reduce the energy needed to dry board systems.

Working with long-standing cleantech partner CEE, Promat has put the new drying system in place at one of its production lines in the Tisselt factory in Belgium, where super-heated steam is reused to deliver energy efficient drying of passive fire protection boards.

By using super-heated steam and heat in the drying process, the amount of energy used to create heat is vastly reduced.

Decreased energy consumption

Duncan Gardiner, sustainability and communications manager at Promat, explained: “The new production line uses energy far more efficiently, with heat recovered and reused throughout the process via an industrial heat pump. Thanks to this steam dryer technology, we’ve seen a decrease in energy consumption during the production of our boards, which realises a considerable contribution towards our decarbonisation targets.”

Promat is part of The ETEX Group, which has committed to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). To achieve this, the company continues to invest in technology that requires significantly less energy, also adding solar panels to power its Tisselt plant and the electrification of some production processes.

Gardiner added: “We are deeply committed to reducing the environmental impact of both our products and processes as much as possible. Not only are our boards now more sustainably produced, but all of the boards made in Tisselt are backed by Environmental Product Declarations to provide transparent, third party verified data to customers, in turn ensuring they have access to credible sustainability information that informs specification.”

In addition to reducing the environmental impact of its existing products and processes, new products from Promat are designed with higher circular content and lower water and energy consumption very much in mind.

*Further information is available online at www.promat.com/en-gb/sustainability/decarbonisation/