Opportunity knocks
20 December 2022Dan Bircham, water and energy specialist at Christeyns UK, believes that in general, there remain good opportunities to save water and energy in most laundries. Washing at low or lower temperatures, using heat exchangers, water filtration and recovery systems and potentially downsizing the steam boiler or going steam free would be largest impact actions.
Christeyns sees engineering as a crucial part of its business offering, running a dedicated commercial laundry engineering division that currently handles major contracts for laundries nationwide.
One key aspect in reducing costs and usage is the conversion to zero steam and introducing main wash booster systems. This brings increased efficiency in comparison to steam heating as the energy produced can then be reintroduced directly back into the process.
A traditional steam boiler is in general a very inefficient way of heating water in industrial laundry processes. Here’s why:
- Boiler capacity may be too large, there are losses of condensate heat and a large amount of energy is needed for start-up.
- Steam generators have a small heat buffering capacity and do not cope well with peaks in steam demand (from WE’s).
- Steam quality has a large impact on wash quality, whiteness, and textile wear; these issues do not occur with steam free.
- Steam free heating is cleaner, more efficient and saves water.
- Direct gas fired equipment is more efficient.
Christeyns offers ZERO-STEAM, steam-free hot water solutions for washer extractors and tunnel washers. The main benefits of this sustainable technology include less energy loss via more efficient utilisation of primary energy carriers and cost savings.
Production capacity is increased as hot water is produced independently from the process and there is no need to start up the steam boiler before production.
These Zero-Steam solutions from Christeyns are highly efficient, says fthe comany, have a fast start-up, require minimum maintenance. Hot water is produced on-demand.
To complement a Zero-Steam system, Christeyns also offers a range of heat exchangers that effectively transfer air-to- water heat from laundry finishing equipment. The Heat-X Air range transfers free energy from ironers to the washing process. Heat-X Air recovers both the sensible and latent heat from the ironers. It’s an easy to install, plug-and-play system.
Heat-X Air can reclaim up to 35% of the iron energy input and by transferring this heat to fresh water, it provides significant energy savings in the wash process.
