Innovation comes in many forms. Often, combining existing technologies in new ways creates solutions to difficult challenges. Our project for one of the largest bottlers of non-alcoholic beverages in Europe and Africa demonstrates how innovative thinking can simply, quickly, and economically help a major company meet its social responsibility and operating goals.
Bottled Up
Athens-based Coca-Cola HBC (CCHBC) has long maintained a commitment to sustainable growth. We worked intensively with Coca-Cola HBC to provide a single-point solution to its energy needs at production facilities across a very large territory stretching from Europe to Ukraine, Russia and Africa. Our innovative “Quad Gen” combined heat and power plants supply Coca-Cola HBC with more reliable less expensive energy while substantially reducing the environmental impact of its existing operations including reducing carbon emissions by more than 80,000 metric tons per year and comparable reduction in system emissions of Sox and particulate matter.
Our solution involves building a cogeneration facility at each CCHBC location to provide electric power, heat and steam, chilled water, and carbon dioxide. The “quad-gen” plants use one or more simple gas engines, and capture the exhaust heat to provide heating, hot water, and steam. A portion of the hot water is transformed to chilled water via an absorption chiller. Finally, carbon dioxide is removed from the exhaust stack, compressed purified to beverage/food grade quality and used to carbonate Coca-Cola HBC’s carbonated drinks.
The “quad-gen” design significantly reduces CCHBC’s environmental footprint—carbon emissions for the first phase of projects will be reduced by nearly 80,000 metric tons per year. Furthermore, it provides a reliable source of energy to CCHBC and in many markets which have a shortage or predicted shortage of power, it adds efficient capacity.
Simple and Effective
Because we are using a standardized design for every facility, we can execute construction on multiple facilities simultaneously. This standardization also lowers design, construction and operating costs.
