Unilever cuts carbon with biomass boiler rollout

Hindustan Unilever, a subsidary of the consumer goods giant, is rolling out the boilers across a number of key sites – Chiplun, Puducherry, Goa, Nashik, Mysore, Haridwar, Hosur and Kandla.

The first units went in at Chiplun and Puducherry in 2008 as part of a retrofit of the existing oil-fired boilers which were low in efficiency and manual in operation.

Since the installation of the new boilers, manufacturing operations at both sites saw a reduction of 11,000 tonnes and 10,000 tonnes per annum in carbon emissions respectively.

Building on this success, the first fully integrated and automated multimedia boiler and biomass briquettes which burn spent coffee waste and effluent treatment (ETP) plant waste were installed into the Goa, Mysore and Nashik factories in 2011.

The Mysore factory added impetus to the project by utilising in-house generated wet coffee and ETP sludge as fuels for the boilers.

Unilever expects the project will reduce CO2 emissions by 28,314 tonnes per annum in total, 7.8% of the total load, generating cost savings of €2.6m.

Maxine Perella