CWS Boco, Cork

The Irish business of CWS-Boco was not always as successful as it is today. In recent years and under different ownership the business was under threat from high costs on one side, and low priced contracts on the other.

With the takeover by CWS Boco the opportunity was seized to restructure the entire business, closing several smaller plants in the process and focussing the main linen production on a new plant located on the outskirts of Cork.

CWS-Boco itself is a division of The Haniel Group, a family owned €27.3 billion turnover group of companies headquartered in Duisburg, Germany.

The Textile Care division is active in 18 countries and turns over 748m a year employing 7900 people in Europe, and now with 2 ‘state of the art’ laundries in China

Cork is the second city of the Republic of Ireland, Motto: Statio Bene Fida Carinis - "A safe harbour for ships"

one of the two CBW’s and supplies process water to the other CBW and the washer extractors.

At the time of the survey this structure was in place, but finally all waste water exited the building at around 44 Degrees Celsius - a loss of heat energy valued at around €100,000 per annum. The hope was that this heat could be recovered and recycled to reduce the ‘new energy’ needed to provide the process requirements.

After receiving a detailed proposal from Aquatherm, the decision was made to install an XV20 to extract the energy from the entire effluent flow.

In order to collect the waste water from the bank of washer extractors, which are physically separated from the main washing area, a filter pump supplied by Aquatherm was used. The waste water from the washer extractors is mixed with the effluent from the tunnel washers, before making an impact there too.

Today CWS-Boco Ireland is one of the country’s leading provider of hotel and restaurant linen, washroom hygiene, workwear, dust control mats and sterile surgical supplies.

As part of the ongoing efforts to improve the operating efficiency and reduce energy use, Aquatherm were asked to survey the Cork plant in Spring 2012.

It was immediately apparent that there was an unusually good understanding of the methods and potential for energy and water saving amongst the CWS Boco Management team, and equally impressive was the range and detail of the management information relating to services and production.
This was manifested by the way in which the services have been carefully arranged to maximise the benefit of future recovery systems.

Two features were particularly notable for their effectiveness; all water supplied to the washing plant is preheated, which has a positive impact on process times and provides the well known benefits of hot rinsing.

There is also a water reuse system in operation which takes waste water from all of the waste water is pumped through the Aquatherm XV20.
All the pre-heated fresh water from the Aquatherm is piped to a 12m3 hot water buffer tank located in the boiler house from which all the machines draw their hot water supply.

The original calculations were based on the plant operating a double shift (80 hours) and processing 216 tonnes a week. The system was estimated to recover 65% of the energy currently going to drain with the added benefit of a 481 tonnes saving in CO2 emissions.

The estimated payback for the project is under 12 months and the all important energy consumption for production is now below 0.8 kWh per kg.
Several months later, an email from Ciaran Kearney, the Maintenance Manager for the Cork plant summed things up nicely -

[su_quote]if we were to buy a waste water recovery system again I believe it would be a one horse race...your product does not need selling if the right person with the right 'know how' sees it working in a plant[/su_quote]

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