/ Magazine / ECOLAB. Explore how partnerships can drive sustainable and efficient operations in the Laundry Industry

ECOLAB. Explore how partnerships can drive sustainable and efficient operations in the Laundry Industry

Ecolab in partnership with Wientjens to help Newasco De Hoop laundry: working together to ensure efficient operations, while being sustainable by preserving water & energy resources and reducing environmental impact

Your business is doing so well that you take the step of building a new laundry. What process improvements would you make? What can really transform laundry operations today?

Right partnerships make it happen: Ecolab and Wientjens have been working together to help an industrial laundry Newasco De Hoop make unique process improvements and innovations in water and energy management at their new facility thanks to their integrated Water& Energy solutions: Ecolab’s 3R (REduce, REuse, REcycle) concept and Wientjens' advanced recycling equipment. Newasco De Hoop new facility’s setup ensures optimal reuse, reducing fresh water, and reusing valuable energy, while reducing laundry carbon footprint. Family-owned Newasco De Hoop has washed textiles on “Bleachers’ Island” in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, for over 100 years. The laundry is now run by the 4th and 5th generations of the Nieuwland family. In all that time, they have embraced technical developments swiftly and striven to be innovative, while keeping a sharp eye on costs. A formula that is part of their success story. Catering for hospitals, hotels and care homes in a 50 km radius around Amersfoort, Newasco De Hoop processes some 120 tonnes of textiles per week. The bulk of production is flatwork (rental linen), with some workwear and bed quilts. The remaining 20% of production is personal garments. The laundry has some 140 employees encompassing 14 nationalities, many of them with the company for more than 20 years, proof of the good working atmosphere. Struggling to accommodate their growing business in the existing plant, around 2019 the decision was taken to build a completely new laundry on a developing industrial estate in Amersfoort.

How it was possible to retain efficiency in a new, bigger laundry?

Director Marc Nieuwland led the planning for the project and there is much to talk about the A+++ building, the sustainable linen choices, improved facilities for employees and the impact of electricity network congestion on working hours. However, this story’s focus is on Newasco’s choices around chemistry and the wash process. Ecolab, Wientjens' partner and Newasco's long-term detergent supplier, designed a new Water & Energy concept to meet the requirements of the new laundry.

The old laundry was operating at full capacity, so its performance figures were already very good, with overall water usage of 5.5 l/kg and energy usage some 1 kWh/kg, using one tunnel washer (approx 2.5 l/kg water usage) and some 11 open end machines (total capacity 600 kg).
The bar was high to match this performance in the new plant, where capacity was dimensioned for significant growth. The following key factors were crucial:
• Keeping the wash process as simple and straightforward as possible.
• Understanding exactly which re-use solution fitted best for a given water/energy stream.
• Choosing washer capacities with an eye to enhancing the water recycling loops investment.
• Choosing the optimum constellation of Wientjens equipment for quick payback on investment.

Understanding of Newasco’s textile mix and optimizing water & energy consumptions was the key to build the right solution! Due to their expertise and Wientjens equipment, Ecolab was able to recommend a more streamlined wash setup compared to the previous situation. This will ensure the most efficient use of water and energy. The decision was taken early on to make use of a new, 3 tons gas-fired steam boiler for process water heating. A flue gas condenser increases boiler efficiency, giving an extra 5°C to 8°C boost to the temperature of fresh process water. Another choice was to use fresh water from Newasco’s own well – water in this part of the Netherlands is famed for its softness. Instead of numerous open-end machines, on the advice of Ecolab technical manager Koen Vandenbroucke, the choice was made for a new tunnel batch washer to wash the mix of white and colored personal garments (40°C). A second new tunnel washer was installed to wash the main volume of white flat linen (60°C). The tunnel from the previous plant was retained to wash remaining white textiles. Some open-end machines are still in use in the new laundry, mainly for delicate personal garments and specials. By accommodating the bulk of production in efficient tunnel batch washers, the laundry has smoothed workflows significantly compared to the old location. But that was not the only rationale for the choice to split the workload per tunnel by color.

From his years long collaboration with Wientjens, Vandenbroucke knew that this set-up allowed for optimal water and energy usage, using Wientjens equipment to recycle wash water and recover energy. Partnerships makes it happen: Ecolab and Wientjens Combined their Expertise for Newasco’s Success.

To maximise gains from water reuse and energy recovery, Newasco De Hoop made full use of the modular product characteristics and installed 4 units:
• Wientjens Blue Ocean Filter (water & energy recycling)
• EnergyOptimizer Plus P (effluent heat exchanger)
• Wientjens AquaEnergy System (storage of hot filtrate for re-use)
• Wientjens AquaDrain (capture of filtered dirt and microplastics). The real magic is to be found in the carefully considered reuse loops between the wash process and the Wientjens equipment, where Ecolab’s expertise came to the fore. All wash water from the whites’ tunnel washer is recycled by the Blue Ocean Filter.

The energy in this recycled wash water is retained well, with a temperature of around 52°C. With its two 1800-liter buffer tanks, the Blue Ocean Filter ensures that not a drop of this hot wash water is wasted, all while offering sufficient capacity and the process flexibility. This treated water (filtrate) is then re-used in the colored tunnel washer, ensuring that all whites wash water is re-used for the colored wash. This setup eliminated the need for complex tunnel batch washer systems with separate white and colored tanks. Such a setup would ultimately not have been used efficiently because the water quality in the colored tanks would not have met standards. Consequently, the water would likely have remained unused due to these quality concerns, rendering the entire system ineffective. Separating the white and colored wash flows avoided this problem. Furthermore, the installed Blue Ocean Filter is future-ready for an additional mixed tunnel washer if needed. All wash water from the mixed tunnel washer goes to the effluent heat recovery system, the EnergyOptimizer Plus. The recovered energy is used to heat fresh water for all the tunnel washers, this heated fresh water is stored in the Wientjens AquaEnergy System. Recovered energy from the boiler flue gas condenser is collected in this tank as well. The average temperature is around 46°C to 48°C. Moreover, the AquaEnergy System can collect any surplus flash steam. In the future, additional recovered energy (from the finishing area or other sources) could also be collected in this AquaEnergy System.

Which results have been achieved thanks to these partnerships?

Driving laundry business in a more sustainable way by preserving resources and reducing environmental impact. After some (pandemic related) hiccups, building work started in summer 2023 and in the first weekend of July 2024 the laundry moved to a gleaming 2-storey building. The move, a huge operation, was completed in just a few days. Deliveries to customers continued throughout. It’s still early days for Newasco De Hoop in its new location; routines are being established in the new facility and that takes time. Already, one big aim has been achieved. Specifically in the wash process, energy is recovered from all tunnel washer effluent. Newasco has succeeded in keeping as much energy as possible within the system for re-use, a big win. Thanks to the re-use of filtered wash water, freshwater usage is low, although the laundry is not (yet!) washing at capacity, figures for the whites’ tunnel is 2.5 l/kg and for colored around 5 l/ kg, the latter higher due to smaller volumes of personal garments. The freshwater consumption for the total laundry is currently at 4 l/kg. Data from both the Wientjens Cloud Dashboards and Ecolab’s WPI is crucial for monitoring the equipment performance and making incremental improvements Ecolab’s Koen Vandenbroucke estimates the energy reduction thanks to energy recovery measures at 0.16 kWh/kg at full production capacity.

Which is the conclusion, and which is the next step?

Target for total energy usage across the whole laundry process is 1kWh/kg textiles or even less, an ambitious target for a steam laundry. Certainly, there is optimum (re)use of energy in the wash process, thanks to carefully considered energy recovery. This was a completely new laundry set-up, allowing opportunity to design for optimal performance. Thanks to Wientjens’ longstanding collaboration with Ecolab, the knowledge was there to design a simple and practical wash process while achieving maximum water and energy efficiency. The start-up was happily without big problems, Newasco, Ecolab and Wientjens are already very satisfied with this project and look forward to impressive water-energy performance for Newasco. •

DETERGO MAGAZINE # APRIL 2025

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