Keyword or Search: <% Dim MyValue2 Randomize MyValue2 = Int((6 * Rnd) + 1) Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Conn.Open Session("trsa_ConnectionString2") MySQL = "Select * From HouseAds Where HouseAdID Like '%" & MyValue2 & "%' " Set Conn = Conn.Execute(MySQL) %> "> " alt="" width=130 height=85 border=1 align=top> <% conn.close %>	Controlling energy/utility costs LSAA's workshop at the 66th convention on energy was led by I. David Samuels, chairman of the LSAA Plant Operations Committee, and a vice-president of Aratex, with his base in Opa-Locka, Fla. Speakers were Theodore Stephens of Procter & Gamble, Cincinnati; Joseph S. Dorfman of Environmentals, Inc., Anaheim, Calif.; and August Palmieri of Associated Linen Services, Utica, N.Y. August Palmieri uses a committee a approach in conserving energy for Associated Linen Service, New York. He says: PALMIERI: I am going to relate to you some of the things we did to conserve energy. My company has four small plants in the Northeast, and we started by making up some small forms on which to chart our utility and energy costs for each plant on a weekly basis. We took daily readings of our oil, gas, and water, recording them on these forms. At the end of each week we summarized them. We then related our weekly poundage to the total number of gallons of water used and total consumption of gas. We also included the other items pertaining to our business, such as our washroom supply costs, labor, the number of hours the washroom production equipment ran. This enabled us to build up a history of the consumption of utilities and we were able to log everything in relation to pieces and pounds produced each week. After a while, we found a pattern developing for each plant. If there was any abnormal consumption of the utilities, we noticed it right away. In fact, we had a water meter go bad in one plant and a gas meter in another. It showed up right away. One was recording too much and one was recording nothing at all. When we called the water and utility companies, they changed the meters and there was no problem in verifying our usage. We also established an energy survey committee composed of one member from each plant which visited each plant and conducted surveys of utilities at each. We determined how much excess lighting there was and decided what could be done to eliminate it. Incandescent lighting was replaced with fluorescent lighting with low amperage bulbs. We delayed the starting time of all production equipment until the last possible moment. We felt this saved us a lot of wear and tear on the machinery as well as steam and power. We checked our water lines and valves daily. Any leaks were repaired immediately. We found the best time to check these is when the plant is completely shut down. You can hear them; you can see them. Once a month we have washroom technicians from our chemical supplier give us a complete report on our washroom equipment. Our heat reclaimers are cleaned periodically. The gauges are monitored daily. If we find any variance in the 15-degree approach that the system was designed for, we find out what is causing it. In one of our plants in which we have water-cooled air conditioners and compressors, we recycle the cooling water. We try to keep our tumblers clean. This is probably the biggest cause of wasted energy we have. When the holes in the tumblers are plugged with plastic you are not getting proper heat transfer. We found the best way to correct this is by using a small propane torch and burning them out. We tried all the other methods, and our people prefer to do it this way. We clean our lint traps twice a day. This also reduces the fire hazard. The ductwork is another thing that is important. With the vibration you have on tumblers, the ductwork sometimes becomes loose or cracked, the lint starts blowing around, and you have another fire hazard. Lint will get into your burner and plug it up. You will only see half a flame there. The best thing to do is shut it down and clean it. In our power plants we find the air compressors are big energy users. To keep them efficient you must keep air filters clean and drain your tanks thoroughly so as to keep all the contaminants out of the plant's equipment. If they are water cooled, don't just open a valve wide. Adjust it so you are using only the amount of water you need to keep that compressor cool. You can buy electrical switches that control the temperature and give a signal to you if you are overheating. The boiler is the largest user of energy in a laundry. Because of this we spend a lot of money and time cleaning it continuously while the plant is operating. We use a fuel and water treatment program, and all the tests are made daily and recorded in a log. Once a month a chemical treatment engineer comes in and makes any necessary adjustments to the program. Our boiler engineer does this between the times of his visit. WATER SOFTENERS In one plant where we thought we had good control, we still developed a small amount of scale which even the chemical engineer could not remove. So he furnished us with a small water softener which we use only for the makeup water of the boiler. Within a period of about a month and a half we started to notice a drop in our oil consumption. After two months it leveled out. We found it did pay to put this unit in. Our only cost was for the piping and labor. Pieces of insulation occasionally came loose from our hot water and steam pipes. It was a continuous job to monitor this, but the survey team that we had going around noticed all these things and had them taken care of. One of the best things we did was to establish a monthly steam trap check test. Each month every trap in every plant is checked with a pyrometer. Even though we do it once a month, we still find traps that leak or are plugged up. The elimination of a leaking trap usually pays for the cost of the pyrometer. We bought one for each plant. We also found some of the fellows didn't know how to read them properly. The way we do it is to clean the pipe on the inlet and out. let side of the trap, take a reading on both sides, and you should get a trap steam differential across it. Whenever we receive a delivery of oil, we use a stick to check the tank, taking "before" and "after" readings. We want to make sure we are getting every gallon of oil we are paying for. We also use this method to record our daily usage. We don't use a meter. Each boilerman is checked periodically to see how he is blowing down his boiler. We don't want to blow out the treatment or the pure water we are making. We also have each boiler checked periodically for its efficiency. If you have a stack thermometer and a tester, you can check your CO2 readings and see what the efficiency of your boiler is. If you have too high a stack temperature, you are losing heat. We replace any gauge that is not working properly — whether temperature, air, or vacuum. This is the only way we have of knowing whether or not our equipment is working properly. We also have large heated working areas that waste energy if not properly controlled. In our part of the country, we have extremely cold weather and long winters. Our offices are heated by a combination gas-fired - heater and air-conditioning unit mounted on the roof. We used to set the thermostats and just let the heaters run. Now we have changed them to day and night thermostats in which we have a normal temperature in the daytime and at night a lower temperature. With the addition of a seven-day clock, we can keep the lower temperature throughout the weekend. SUMMER SITUATION In the summer it works just in reverse. We now are set up so that we have a cool temperature during the day and a complete shutdown at night and on weekends. We have a manual override on these units in case we need it. We also found that we can shut off a lot of our exhaust fans in the winter since the tumblers exhaust a lot of air. We found out by experimenting with various fans that we could turn some of them off as long as this didn't result in too much condensation in the washroom and over the flatwork ironers. In one plant that had cast iron radiators and wall-hung pipe heaters, we found they were consuming too much steam. We removed them and installed steam-unit heaters which we control with thermostats and aquastats that turn them off when the temperature permits. We also found out we had to keep them clean. They have a tendency to fill up with lint and grease, and if they do, they are not going to transfer the heat that you are looking for. Since we are in a cold area, we have to insulate heavily. We insulate inside and out. We also insulate where we have windows. We take them out if we don't need them. This accomplishes several things — it prevents vandalism; you don't have to paint them, you don't have to replace them when they are broken. In the summer -time we found that the large window areas on the roof made the plant too hot because the morning sun shone through and by noon it was unbearable. We removed these because we had plenty of light inside without them. As a result, the plant was a lot cooler in the summer and warmer in winter. USE OF LOUVERS In some of the areas where we did remove these, we installed fans and louvers in order to give us some ventilation. In the wintertime we closed them up with a cover. In other areas which we could not ventilate without a fan, we stuck in some large 30-by-30 draft fans which run by wind and draft. No other power is involved, and our only maintenance on them is to grease the bearings. There are many other things we did, probably too numerous to mention. If you have a good energy team, they will find the spots that need changing. There are many new energy savers, additives, and gadgets being sold today. We look at all of them, but we don't buy or try them unless there is a money-back guarantee. If they work, we buy them. I have also seen different types of heat reclaimers for boiler stacks. Some people say they work, some say they don't. The ones I have looked at represent pretty substantial investments. And one of the problems is keeping the transfer surfaces free of carbon and soot. You also have to watch your dew point in the stacks to prevent corrosion. I am not convinced that they really pay for themselves. If you have one and it works for you, tine. I've described the system we us in our plant for monitoring energy consumption and I've described some of the specific areas in which we've made substantial savings We've made considerable progress using this approach and I'm sure we can still do a lot more. I believe everyone can do as well, but you must continually monitor you operations. It's up to management to see that it gets done. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS QUESTION: In my plant I am pretty close to being able to shut down entirely at lunchtime. Do you think there is any advantage in shutting down the boiler at lunchtime? SAMUELS: Years ago the normal practice was to shut the header valve down in the boiler about 15 to 20 minutes before you quit. If you were going to shut down your ironer at noon for lunch until 12:30 but wanted to save some fuel, you'd turn your header over on the boiler al)out a quarter to 12, then continue running your plant to noon. But then you'd have to turn the boiler back on again at a quarter after 12 to make sure the temperatures were back up on the machines at 12:30 when employees came back to work. It is a staggered shut-down and start-up. PALMIERI: I think that is a short period in which to do it. You can shut it off for ten hours or so and go home. I have been in plants where they turned the lights off, shut everything off. But in these cases they were taking about an hour for lunch. I don't think it is worth it. DORFMAN: You certainly are not talking al)out turning the boiler off completely. It would cool 'off too much, it would just make problems. COMMENT: I'd like to make an observation. I have walked into many laundries lately in which they had a sort of a gut feeling that they were spending too much money on fuel and water and wanted to start thinking about recycling. So I go in to give them a firm estimate of what this should save them in the way of water and fuel. I have only found maybe ten per cent who have any idea of what their water costs or what their water usage per pound of linen is, what their fuel costs are, even what their fuel bills are running. When they do come up with a number, it is often a five-year-old number. It's usually just the bigger companies that have the time to get that information. The little company doesn't usually know. PALMIERI: You are absolutely right. This is one of the things we found — that our people, even though we told them to do certain things, when you went around you found they weren't done. One of the things we did was to buy LSAA's publication called "How to Reduce Costs Through Energy Conservation," and we gave half a dozen copies to our plant people to read. There is a lot of good information there. If you don't have this, you should get it; it is the greatest piece to come out since the energy crisis hit us. In fact, it is what we used as a guide to establish our committee. DORFMAN: You still have to motivate them. We bought a hundred copies of it, but if you don't motivate them, it won't work. PALMIERI: Management has to back it up or it won't work. DORFMAN: Anybody running a plant, who is properly motivated, who wants to do this, can do it without an engineering degree, without a slide rule, without a computer, or any of that. It is really just common sense. And I would urge that no matter what size plant you have, your people begin to keep the kinds of records we've been talking about. QUESTION: One of the speakers earlier said something about the large number of "black boxes" that are being sold with the claim that they will save energy in the plant. Would any of the speakers care to comment on these? SAMUELS: First of all, I think you have to ask yourself what the purpose of the device is and then you have to find out whether or not it does what it is supposed to do. In terms of energy conservation, your major piece of equipment is the boiler. You are concerned about the efficiency with which you convert the burned fuel into steam. Because the cost of replacing a 400 hp boiler may run as high as $90,000 to $100,000 dollars, you also have to be concerned about maintaining it in order to safeguard your investment. Your boiler man should be taught how to sample and test the chemical nature of the boiler water, and he should do this every day. The quality of your feed water has a lot to do with saving fuel and with how long your boiler will last. The difference between having an eighth of an inch of scale and not having any represents something like 20 per cent of your fuel. DORFMAN: Let me tell you a few of the things we learned about these so-called black boxes. We were interested in one of them that injects water into the mixture of fuel and air going into the boiler. The claim was that it improved the Btu content of the fuel. I told them that I would write the kind of guarantee I wanted them to sign. Then they could put their equipment in. I told them that I would pay them when I was satisfied that their equipment did what they said it would do. They agreed and put the thing in. It did absolutely nothing. To this day, they haven't come to get it, and it is still sitting there — despite the fact that we've asked them to come and get it. We did learn a valuable lesson from this experience. We learned that our combustion efficiency was terrible and that we really had been oblivious of this. Now we re trying to get a continuous recording device installed on our boiler one that will give us a continuous recording of excess air, of uncombusted combustibles, of stack temperature, and, if possible, the CO2. This will allow us to adjust and fine tune that boiler to its optimum. For the first time, we will know the combustion efficiency of the burner. In another plant, we are going to change the burner just as soon as possible. Some of the burners we're using were built 15 years ago when gas consumption wasn't as important as it is now. Some of the controls are ineffective, and the fuel/air mixture is inefficient. The amount of money that we will spend on these new burners will be repaid so fast it won't be believed. PROTECT YOURSELF We talk to everyone that comes along with a new kind of energy saving device. We listen to what they say, and we question them. Some we turn down right away. If we think what they have to offer looks good, I tell them, again, "I'll write the guarantee; you put it in; and if it does what you tell us it will do then we will pay for it." Sometimes we never hear from them again. I think you have to be very cautious. It's a simple fact that you don't get something for nothing. SAMUELS: I would like to summarize some of the things we have been discussing. We've tried to give you some ideas on how to reduce your fuel consumption — to get better use of the fuels available to you. We're running into a lot of unusual situations these days. As Ted Stephens mentioned, during emergency conditions we really have limited fuels available during the winter or during other periods of crisis. You can get by, putting in more merchandise, increasing the mechanical action on your washers, increasing your supplies, etc. You have to do these things intelligently. Ted didn't say it was cheaper, but he did say it would keep you in business. One of the general rules you should always follow is to keep your equipment and your plant clean. Keep everything operating as it was originally designed and intended to operate. If your wash-wheels are kept operating as they should be and if they're kept clean they're going to operate better and more efficiently. You will use less water and less steam. It will take a shorter time to complete the wash cycles, and you'll get a better product out. Many of us are using steam tunnels for finishing garments. If you don't already have one, you should install a door in the back so that you can open it up and blow the coils out twice a day. You'll dry your garments a lot faster if you do that simple thing. DORFMAN: All of you probably think you clean your electric motors often enough. The truth is that if you clean them three times as often as you do, your electric bills will go down. There is an engineering reason for this. Because the lint and dust form an insulation around the motor, it becomes overheated and is forced to work harder in order to produce its designed efficiency. The longer it is allowed to run this way, the less efficiently it runs. You are burning up kilowatt hours to create extra heat that is doing no good. A clean motor reduces that to a minimum, so you save electricity and, at the same time, increase the life of the electric motors. KEEP RECORDS SAMUELS: If you don't do anything else, at least go back to your plants and install some very simple records — the kind Bud Dorfman and Augie Palmieri showed you. From these, you will be able to see quickly whenever changes take place in your operation that result in abnormal fuel or utility consumption. DORFMAN: By simply keeping track of your water usage and relating this to your production volume, you will have an indicator to help you spot abnormal losses —including open or leaking water valves and broken underground water lines. Without the records we keep, we would never have found some of these things in our company. SAMUELS: I'd like to tell you about another very simple but costly situation. Let's say you have a boiler in your plant that you're firing on gas but which also uses oil on a standby basis. Maybe on a certain date the gas company says, "Burn oil for a while." So you burn oil for a week or two and then you go back on gas again. What you may not have known was that your burner tip was not adjusted properly for oil and you are spewing carbon all over the boiler. You generated enough soot inside that boiler to make a whole blackboard. Without the kinds of simple records we've been talking about, you may not notice that the stack is now running 700 degrees Fahrenheit, and you're wasting tremendous quantities of fuel. In every plant that I have anything to do with they have a checkoff sheet, and they record these things every day. Some people do it weekly, but by doing it daily you can catch these abnormalities immediately. PROVIDE INCENTIVES DORFMAN: We are in the midst of working on something that may sound very elementary. We will simply give a $25 check to each plant engineer whose plant continues to reduce energy consumption every month, say for three months. We've tried to come up with something to help the motivation. We feel that we have to involve the plant engineer or the chief mechanic at the plant rather than the manager. Sometimes these people are so well taken care of by their unions that they're not motivated at all, but a few extra bucks like that turns them on. COMMENT: In our own operation we found out that the point you are making regarding cleanliness really affects efficiency. We used to hire outside contractors to come in and clean up, but we found out that if our plant people knew someone is going to clean up after them, they're not going to be concerned. So now every person in our plant is involved in the cleanup of that plant before they leave at the end of the day. This has been very successful. Believe it or not, our productivity increased just from that one simple little thing. SAMUELS: I must agree. There is another little thing you fellows can try if you really want to see what your plant is doing. Walk into the plant on a Saturday morning when you are not operating. Just walk around in the plant, and you'll be amazed at the number of sounds you hear whistling all around the plant. You'll hear leaks that would be impossible to hear while the plant is in operation.