Resource Conservation pressure and additional width. That innovation saves natural gas by reducing drying times since there’ s less water to evaporate than using a 1-meter-wide press( 35 % to 40 % moisture retention vs. 55 %-60 %). The wider press also returns more water to the tunnel. McKeown notes that“ with a 28-bar, 1-meter-wide tunnel press which was very common up to the early 2000s, you get just under 500,000 lbs. of force exerted on a load of textiles coming out of a tunnel. However, a 55 Bar 1.3 meter press will exert more than three times( over 1.6 million lbs.) the amount of force compared to a 1-meter press.”
Removing more water means reduced drying time.“ I’ ve got to evaporate more water in the dryers with a one-meter press than I do with a 1.3 meter press,” McKeown says, speaking of the system installed at the company’ s recently opened Martinsburg, WV, plant.“ And that’ s where you save the money. Because drying the linen one of the biggest gas consumers. For us, heating water is not that bad because we have a heat reclaimer. If you don’ t have a heat reclaimer, then your biggest consumer of natural gas is heating water, then dryers. But in our plant, it’ s dryers and then water.” hot, or more likely warm. If you run a cleaner / less soil type of laundry and use conventional washers, then the reuse number can go up to 30 %… with some simple equipment.( i. e., a shaker screen, tank and pumps).” This can generate a return on investment( ROI) in months, depending on the cost of the water.
For additional water savings, the next step up is water reuse and wastewater recycling, O’ Neill says.“ The most common types in our industry are Ceramic Micro Filtration( CMF = 0.1-10 microns) and Ceramic Ultra Filtration( CUF = 0.01-0.1 microns),” he says.“ Both work and work well in the correct application.” Don’ t expect drinking-water quality from those systems, O’ Neill says. For that level of savings, you’ ll want a reverse osmosis( RO) system.“ Both CMF and CUF can get you over 50 % recycling pretty easily,” he says.
“ Then from there to get to 75 % or more, it can be done with equipment like an RO and or another level of micro filtration or ultra filtration after the initial membranes have done the‘ heavy lifting,’ so to speak.” The latter two systems can generate significant savings, but they require a substantial investment.“ Get your checkbook ready at this level,” O’ Neill says.“ It is not cheap. But it does work, and the membranes and cleaning technology have come a long way in the last 10 years.”
Two More Examples
We asked two other operators about their efforts to reduce water and energy consumption. Highlights of their responses follow. One company, Quintex Services Ltd., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, had a Kemco RO system installed several years ago. The company continues to
Consultant Gerard O’ Neill, president and CEO of American Laundry Systems, notes that when designing plants, he focuses on conserving heat and water by using a trench system that facilitates reuse and heat recovery.“ I always design for at least a split trench and split pit-water reuse system,” he says.“ It costs very little to split / divide a trench and pit, and with the correct choices of what water to reuse and what water to let go down the sewer( after heat reclamation), you can typically get around 20 % of your water reused, depending on how heavy the soil factor is, using this simple method. Additional benefits are that some chemistry is already in the water, and the water is already
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