1978. With a toolbox, Alejandro Mas, CEO at Sugimat, began his career buying and repairing industrial boilers with his own hands in the countryside in Alicante (Spain). After five years of hard work and with all the knowledge he had acquired, Alejandro decided to come back to Valencia, his hometown, and build his own industrial boilers together with a small group of experts in this matter. Today, 40 years later, this Spanish company has grown from a small workshop to the current factory with specialized staff, more than 100 employees, modern machinery, and up to 7 offices spread over Europe & North America.
“There is no limit. We try to do our best and offer the best solutions to our customers”, Mas has said referring to the big milestone in the company’s success story. Sugimat is the leader company in the Spanish industry in the design, manufacture, and commissioning of energy saving and generation solutions like steam boilers, hot water boilers, and thermal-oil boilers using fossil fuels, biomass, and unconventional fuels. Even so, it always bet strongly on R&D. An example of this is its latest pioneering project based on Artificial Vision, which was presented during a cycle of conferences held at FIMMA-Maderalia fair in Valencia (Spain).
Under the motto « Artificial Vision in self-managed thermal plants, » the conference focused on the demands of the industry burning biomass and on Sugimat’s response to those demands, mainly with Artificial Vision adapted to combustion and real-world images processing. The presentation was made by Francisco Ripoll, Export Manager. In his words, “Artificial Vision is the next stride of the human eye, a method that allows you to anticipate and localize possible fault areas. The project has been carried out by our R&D Department, where three engineers and two technicians have worked together in two different areas: combustion and process automation”.
Artificial Vision, the new TESLA heaters
Among the advantages of the computer vision implementation are fewer production stops on the production line, more efficient combustion processes, and less human interaction. Certainly, Artificial Vision is the future solution in an interconnected world during the Big Data era, where activities as complex as driving start to be developed entirely by cars themselves. « Sugimat´s heaters with Artificial Vision is the new TESLA heaters, what companies are demanding in the short and medium term. In fact, we have already implemented an Artificial Vision system in Garnica Plywood, a plant located in Samazan, France, in July 2017 with much success”, Ripoll has added.
Thermal oil boilers vs steam boilers
For Sugimat, the USA is an important market. For this reason, the company wants to improve its visibility attending to different exhibitions in the coming years. Next stop is Wood Bioenergy Conference & Expo from 11st to 12nd April (Booth 703) as well as Panel & Engineered Lumber International Conference & Expo two days later in Atlanta, Georgia. During both exhibitions, Sugimat will give a presentation about the advantages of thermal oil boilers versus steam boilers. Steam boilers are usually installed in order to generate thermal energy for the main part of the processes requiring it. However, in some production processes where a rise in the thermal oil temperature implies an increase of production, thermal oil entails a series of advantages which makes its use very interesting. This is the case, for instance, of primary and secondary wood transformation industries, wood industry or chemical industry.
Some of the advantages of installations using thermal oil over steam are as the following: connection pipes and equipment do not suffer from wear nor incrustations; circuits are closed, so there is no need of purges, condensates nor thermal fluid treatment; freeze point of oil is -40º, which enables the installation of a boiler in cold areas, etc. Last but not least, with thermal oil boilers it is possible to operate at high temperatures without a high pressure, preventing the risk of explosion. In addition, costs are optimized when using thermal oil to generate thermal energy for industrial processes.
Background
The deep know-how of the energy sector since 1978 and the commitment to innovation has enabled Sugimat to design, construct and assemble more than 3,000 solutions/power plants installed in up to 27 different countries around the globe.
Located in Valencia (Spain) Sugimat is the number one in the Spanish industrial boiler market and it has local partners in the USA, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Poland, and the UK. Its portfolio of clients is composed of national and international companies, increasing year by year the volume of exports.
More information:
Lorena García Trinidad
Press Oficcer at Sugimat, S.L.
Mail: Lorena.garcia@sugimat.com
Phone: +34 961 597 230