

“The customer isn’t interested in the thermodynamics and all the smart stuff – it’s just a blue box as far as he’s concerned. There is certainly enough of a belief that such savings can be made for the Heliex kit to have already been sold to plants in the UK, Holland, Italy, France, India, Israel and Ireland. The life of a plant is typically 15 years.” Wright says: “We reckon if the customer is getting his money back in two to four years he’s getting a good deal and thereafter there is profit. “And you’re talking about kit when it’s fully installed costing anything between £150,000 to £350,000-£400,000 depending on the size of the plant.” “Typically we would expect our kit to pay back its cost on anything between two and four years depending on the application. “The customer isn’t interested in the thermodynamics and all the smart stuff – it’s just a blue box as far as he’s concerned and the blue box does a trick but if it doesn’t make money for him, it doesn’t make money for us and there’s no point in doing it.”īut Heliex machines will save businesses really significant amounts of money. Wright says that their systems will change the financial basis of running many different types of plant. “We’ve got about three and a half mega watts of heat left over and that’s being sold for district central heating in houses that surround the factory and there is a school there too and a swimming pool.” “They make half a million bottles a day and we’re generating about 380 kilowatts of energy from the waste. Wright says: “We’ve got a plant running in Milan for example which is collecting heat from the glass furnaces in a bottle factory. Heliex’s machines are already being used in biomass systems, dairies, food factories, distilleries and incinerators. Heliex systems will work where traditional technology won’t and so what they have is a disruptive, transformative process. The company designs, manufactures and supplies patented Steam Expander Systems that generate electricity using waste heat and steam from industrial processes. Heliex Power, the East Kilbride-based company he co-founded, has developed a method of using steam that is hugely more energy efficient and could transform the economics of running many different types of factories.

It may be an accepted fact that the Age of Steam is long over but Dan Wright has other ideas. Welcome to the new age of steam: Dan Wright of Heliex Power on shaking up factory finances
