Industrial Laundry Facility

Local Utility:

Northern Ohio

Challenge:

The facility’s energy performance is being benchmarked against other facilities and they are striving to improve their ranking.

Buying Group Description:

Industrial laundry facility that receives, launders, irons, folds, and returns laundry to health care providers throughout the Midwest.

Resolutions:

• Independent Energy Consultants conducted a 1-day site walk through to assess the energy usages in the plant and to provide conservation measures that would help the plant become more energy efficient, more productive (higher throughput rates), or both.
• Recommendations included:
• Replacing T-12 fluorescent bulbs and magnetic ballasts with T-8 bulbs and electronic ballasts.
• Repairing compressed air leaks.
• Switching service to a lower cost electric supplier.
• If all recommendations were implemented, including those that required further cost/benefit analysis, a 32% reduction in electric consumption and 30% reduction in natural gas could be achieved.

• Discussions with management led us to realize there were real differences in the laundry type, size, weight and required processing steps (e.g., does the piece require ironing, hand folding, etc.) that would necessarily impact the amount of energy and time required to process a pre-defined lot of laundry. Senior Management was cautioned to factor this in when comparing these two Key Performance Indicators for dozens of facilities.
• Lowering air compressor setpoint on the compressor used to blowdown and clean equipment. The reduced pressure used to meet OSHA safety standards was being accomplished with a pressure reducing nozzle.
• Rerouting air compressor suction ductwork to draw in cooler air.
• Optimizing steam pressure and quality to reduce cleaning and drying time for laundry.
• Nine recommendations were made and six provided paybacks of less than two years. Two were recommended for further study and one was suggested as an infrastructure project.
• Client was informed of various Federal, State and local utility grants, loans or rebates that would help defray some of the cost of implementing some of the Energy Conservation Measures.