Pharmaceutical manufacturers are under pressure to cut energy use and emissions without compromising regulatory compliance or product quality. In a recent episode of Off Script: A Pharma Manufacturing Podcast, Emerson’s Global Director of Life Sciences, Tom Belling, explained why steam systems, and the steam traps within them, are a practical place to start.
Why It Matters
Utilities can represent 30 to 50 percent of a facility’s total energy consumption, yet they often receive less attention and instrumentation than core process areas. Because most utility systems sit outside validated product pathways, improving them carries lower risk than changing process steps. Steam supports sterilization, heating, clean utilities, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), so a single failed trap can waste energy continuously. Finding failures early protects product quality while cutting fuel use, emissions, and maintenance cost.
Key Takeaways
- Utilities offer low-risk, high-impact sustainability opportunities for pharmaceutical plants.
- Failed steam traps waste live steam, raise boiler emissions, reduce heat transfer, and can put product quality at risk.
- Across Emerson deployments, 10 to 20 percent of a facility’s steam traps are typically failed at any given time.
- The Rosemount™ 708 Wireless Acoustic Transmitter clamps onto piping to monitor traps around the clock without disrupting operations.
- The Plantweb Insight™ Steam Trap Application turns that data into prioritized, actionable alerts.
- Tom cited a typical return on investment (ROI) of 12 to 18 months, with greater returns when rolled out across a global fleet.
Why Steam Traps Deserve Attention
Tom said manufacturers balance three priorities: sustainability targets, regulatory compliance, and product quality. Compliance and quality are non-negotiable, so the task is finding improvements that leave them untouched. Optimization work usually centers on revenue-generating steps such as chromatography, fermentation, and fill-finish, while utilities run in the background with less automation. That is changing as manufacturers see how much energy those systems consume.
Steam is the most critical of these utilities. It is used for steam-in-place (SIP) sterilization, process heating, clean utilities, and HVAC. Steam traps remove condensate and non-condensable gases and prevent steam loss, which makes each one a control point for energy loss.
What Failed Traps Cost
Tom described four impacts. Open traps leak live steam, so boilers burn more fuel to make up the loss. More steam generation means higher stack emissions. Condensate buildup reduces heat transfer and creates inefficiencies. And if product does not reach the right temperature, quality can suffer. Of the four, he ranks product quality first.
Manual inspection compounds the problem. With an annual check, a trap that fails the day after inspection can waste steam for a year before anyone notices. Checking more often adds labor cost, and results depend on each technician’s skill. In a regulated environment, that reactive approach puts operations, quality, and production at risk.
From Continuous Data to Repair
Non-intrusive sensing offers a better option. The Rosemount 708 mounts externally to process piping without cutting or changing pipe configurations and reports acoustic level and temperature over a WirelessHART® network. Tom explained that it monitors traps 24/7 and shows whether a trap is partially or fully open. It also works alongside other wireless devices in utility areas, such as temperature and tank level transmitters, reducing wiring.
Emerson starts with an assessment that separates critical traps from less critical ones. The Plantweb Insight application then identifies failure modes such as blow through, plugged, flooded, and inactive, and calculates economic and environmental impact. Alerts can go straight to the right person’s phone, from a plant manager to an electrical and instrumentation (E&I) technician, naming the specific trap and plant area. Emerson can also work with existing systems to schedule the repair.
Building the Business Case
Beyond energy savings, Tom pointed to several value drivers. Lower emissions support environmental, social, and governance (ESG) commitments. Targeted repairs cut maintenance cost by ending time spent checking healthy traps. Better reliability protects uptime and throughput, since quality issues force rework. Continuous data also strengthens the sustainability reporting and audits life sciences companies already perform.
Many customers prove the approach at one facility, then extend it across fleets of 30 to 40 sites, where the payback grows.
Learn More
Explore the Rosemount 708 Wireless Acoustic Transmitter and the Plantweb Insight Steam Trap Application on Emerson.com to see how continuous steam trap monitoring can support your facility’s sustainability, reliability, and quality goals.
