Inproheat Industries Ltd. SubCom® Technology

Necessity drives innovation and leads to reliability, sustainability and increased efficiency. This is the essence of Inproheat’s patented Submerged Combustion (SubCom®) technology. For over 45 years, Inproheat has been providing SubCom® solutions to international industrial process liquid heating and evaporation applications, consistently delivering reduced operating and maintenance costs, compliance with stringent emissions regulations, and short payback periods. Submerged Combustion is a method of heating or evaporating slurries and liquids with thermal efficiencies approaching 100%. It differs from conventional methods, such as immersion tube or gas–to-liquid heaters, in which the products of combustion do not contact the solution. With SubCom®, direct heat transfer occurs when gaseous combustion products are forced into the solution, meaning there are no heat transfer surfaces to foul, and the flame never comes in contact with the solution. Developed to handle clean, dirty, and corrosive fluid heating and evaporative processes, SubCom® systems are suitable for unattended operation in remote locations and do not require a licensed steam operator. SubCom® offers a cost-effective alternative to boiler/heat exchanger systems and direct steam injection. Several plants have adopted SubCom® as a solution to their heating challenges. The Technology The use of fossil fuels has helped industrialization enormously, but this has resulted in an increase of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. The challenge of many industries is the requirement to heat large volumes of water or aqueous solutions efficiently – which usually requires a combustion process. With our experience spanning decades of designing and fabricating combustion systems, we found there is one combustion process capable of heating large volumes of industrial liquid solutions at a much at higher thermal efficiencies than traditional methods. That process is Submerged Combustion and Inproheat Industries has patented features in the application of the technology as SubCom®. SubCom® technology is commonly used in industrial liquid heating and evaporation applications across oil and gas, mining, LNG, food production, waste water treatment, chemical, lumber and other industries. SubCom® makes it possible to dramatically reduce greenhouse gases and use combustion processes more economically and more responsibly – creating savings for years to come. A SubCom® solution heating application will typically achieve a thermal efficiency in excess of 15% over conventional heating methods. This increased efficiency likewise contributes to the equivalent reduction in carbon emissions and fuel costs. These clear savings offer a dramatic capital cost recovery compared to conventional heating methods. Design Benefits Fuel Costs Savings and Optimal Efficiency No Additional Process Costs Maintenance Savings Reduced Manpower Costs Recover and Reuse Clean Water Increased Safety