CASE STUDY

Exemplary savings at a social enterprise laundry

How can a mid-sized laundry effectively reduce water and energy costs?

Read how Vanguard Laundry in Australia achieved its water/energy savings goals and more...

Vanguard Laundry’s Story

Vanguard Laundry is a rather special commercial laundry, it’s a social enterprise, empowering people who are locked out of the labour market into employment pathways. Indeed, empowering people by providing transitional work opportunities is actually Vanguard Laundry’s main goal, and the laundry business is how they achieve that.

Top quality of finished textiles and good prices for customers are obviously a must too!

Vanguard Laundry opened in 2016 in one of Australia’s oldest and largest inland cities, around 100km west of Brisbane, Queensland. “The Garden City” , or Toowoomba, is famous for its cathedrals, universities,Victoria buildings and, of course, its gardens.

Catering for hospitality and healthcare customers in and near Toowoomba, Vanguard Laundry processes around 50 tonnes/week using a Girbau 50kg tunnel washer and 3 washer extractors. Their roof is lined with solar panels and they have a strong focus on sustainability, which tells you something about their ethos.

Challenge: managing costs well to ensure continuity

Vanguard Laundry provides approximately 80 new transitional employment opportunities each year. When employees have built skills and then move on to new opportunities elsewhere, it’s a moment of celebration for the laundry, a sign of fulfilling their purpose.

Regular staff changes mean that keeping down laundry running costs is important. In fact, CEO Ryan Salzke was crystal clear as to the laundry’s water/energy challenge – make savings!

Fresh water in Toowoomba is quite expensive at AUS$ 5.50/kilolitre (or m³ for those of us in Europe), also energy prices are a big cost factor. Ryan’s question to Paul Race, Wientjens’ partner at P&G International, was simple: what savings can we make on water and energy?

The Choices

Following his audit of the laundry, Paul calculated that Vanguard Laundry could make water savings of around 60% and energy savings of 10% overall by recycling wash water for re-use in the tunnel batch washer and the washer extractors.

Given the laundry’s size and its washer plant, Paul advised a Wientjens Blue Ocean Compact which has a recycling capacity of around 5m³/hour and integrated buffer tanks for wash water (dirty) and filtrate (clean). This allows Vanguard to easily manage fluctuations in production.

A Wientjens AquaDrain completed the picture, to capture all the solids the Blue Ocean Compact filters out of the tunnel washer process water. These solids, including fibres, hairs, suspended dirt particles and the like are captured in the AquaDrain bag, and are not discharged to sewer.This in turn reduces BOD and COD in discharge effluent so that Vanguard can easily comply with local regulations.

An added advantage is that the captured fibres filtered from the wash water include synthetic fibres which would otherwise degrade to become microplastics if they stayed in the laundry process and were discharged to sewer. Discharge from commercial laundries is just one of the ways that microplastics enter surface water and the environment. The AquaDrain allows Vanguard to capture around 90% of all microplastics shed during washing and dispose of them safely. Collateral environmental gain!

The Solutions

The Blue Ocean Compact requires a small footprint and so was easy to position close to the tunnel washer, as was the AquaDrain. This allows for easy access for the operators without restricting access to the tunnel or other machines in the laundry. The Blue Ocean compact also provides filtered water to the 3 washer extractors that are approximately 40m away from the unit.

Mechanical and electrical installation work took around 3 to 4 days, done by Paul’s local contractors. Equipment start-up was plug and play, leaving the rest of that day for programme optimizations by Paul to balance the wash programme settings. By evening, the Blue Ocean Compact was perfectly tuned to the Girbau tunnel and already making savings.

Jason Kiona, Production Manager: “The Blue Ocean Compact is so quiet, we switch it on in the morning and after that we forget it’s even there! Emptying the AquaDrain bag every day is the only job we need to do” After commissioning, training was done by Paul for Jason and his team.

At no point during the installation and commissioning did the laundry experience any down time.

The screenshot right shows the Vanguard Blue Ocean Compact running, producing 6 m³ an hour of filtered water, at a temperature of 44.2°C - which is 29°C above the incoming fresh water temperature. The dirty water tank is 77% full and the filtered water tank is 103% full. All pumps are running and the filter unit is clean. This screenshot was accessed through the Wientjens Cloud based system which as well as giving live data, gives savings reports, fault finding availability and access to many other functions.

Results

Savings started clocking up from day one, coming in as promised at around 55% to 60% process water savings, meaning that a lot less fresh water is used by the laundry. Lower water and wastewater costs mean greater laundry resilience.

Energy savings: though the wash process consumes only a relatively small proportion of the energy consumption of a laundry (around 15%), all wash water that is recycled by Wientjens equipment retains its heat (energy) for re-use too, so re-using water means re-using energy. The current estimate is that Vanguard will have energy savings over the whole laundry of around 15%, with another 10% expected after further process optimizations (particularly on the ironers).

Discharged laundry effluent is also cleaner, not only better suspended solids, BOD and COD levels, also an estimated 90% reduction in microplastics.

Ryan Salzke, CEO – “The Wientjens Blue Ocean Compact and Aqua Drain solution has produced exactly what we hoped for and what Paul and his team promised it would! Water and energy efficiencies as well as improving our environmental impacts. It’s now a critical part of ensuring we can sustainably continue offering high-quality linen solutions that provide employment outcomes for people facing barriers.”

Our Takeaway

For mid-sized laundries like Vanguard, compact equipment and hassle-free operation are a must, perhaps as important even as the quick investment payback.

We at Wientjens The Dutch Water company are delighted that our equipment helps save water and energy at the other side of the world, and for a laundry with such an inspiring mission.

Explore our full range of water and energy recycling products here.

Recycling has not only saved