This manufacturer of household
light bulbs experienced a real sav-
ings of $120,000 per year on a cap-
ital investment of $11,000 resulting
in full payback in just 33 days.
It is very likely that every light bulbin your home or office came from thePhilips Lighting plant in Danville,Kentucky. Nearly 10% of all the glassbulbs used to make incandescent lightbulbs in the world are manufacturedat this one location. In addition tothese bulbs they make borosilicatehard glass for spotlight lenses andreflectors, and lead glass parts used inthe manufacture of fluorescent tubes.Sand from one particular Tennesseemine is the main raw ingredient at thisfacility. Furnaces must reach temper-atures in excess of 4000ºF to melt thesand. Other additives such as sodiumoxide, dolomitic limestone, lead andboron are added to this molten silicato produce the three specific types ofglass used at this location.
Glass plants use enormousamounts of water in their processes.This facility had tried recycling waterin the past but ran into great difficul-ties. Heat exchangers would plug,cooling jackets would clog with debrisand instruments used to detect thelevel of molten glass in furnaceswould overheat when cooling waterlines choked off. Productiondecreased, wastage increased andcostly labor ran rampant. The expedi-ent answer was to use potable waterpassing through the facility just onetime then release to the environmentthrough a permitted discharge.However, when this route was taken,purchased water consumption imme-diately doubled. Nearly a quarter of amillion dollars a year was being spenton water alone. Resident engineersbegan focusing on the problem. Afterevaluating a number of alternatives,Tom Broderick, MaintenanceManager for Philips Lighting decidedto install automatic self-cleaning
screen filters in the pump house toremove sediments and suspendedsolids from the detention pond neartheir offsite discharge. This filteredrecycle water was then sent back tothe plant at flow rates varying from800 to 1800 gpm for use in coolingvacuum pumps and other on-siteuses. Because the two vertical tur-bine pumps took up so much space in
the pump house and forklift access toperiodically pull these pumps wasnecessary, most style filters could notfit into the available space. Mr.Broderick chose two ORIVAL ModelORG-060-LS automatic filters for thejob since they were vertical in orien-tation and used so little flow for theself-cleaning process.
“I couldn’t believe that the filterswere an in-stock item” stated Mr.Broderick. “The vice president ofOrival personally inspected theinstallation making a few efficiencyadjustments to the controls. Nowthat’s service” he added. Broderickwent on to say “Our water bill hasdecreased by $10,000 per monthsince installing the Orival filters.Commercial laboratory analyses haveshown TSS in the filtered water to bejust as low as in our available potablewater supply.” John Wynd, Engineer– Fellow, Glass Operations says he isready to install filters in anotherapplication to cut municipal waterconsumption even more. The bottomline: low capital cost, extremely fastpayback and large yearly savings.
To find out more about this andother filter applications contactOrival, Inc. at (800) 567-9767 or sendan email to [email protected]. Theirwebsite is www.orival.com.
Filtration System Expenditure Results in Payback Measured in Days
Two ORIVAL self-cleaning filters protect heat exchang-ers and vital instruments at the Philips Lighting Plant
