Washing, ironing, folding and saving energy
03. April 2012
Chest ironer with optimised temperature control
Enormous mountains of dirty linen are produced in hotels, hospitals and care homes. These are cleaned and ironed in laundries using considerable amounts of energy. For this purpose, textile service providers use flatwork ironers. A newly developed chest ironer manages that with a considerably reduced amount of energy. The ironer and the initial results are presented in the recently published BINE Projektinfo brochure “Ironing bed sheets in economy mode” (03/2012).
In the laundry industry, 85% of the energy consumed is used for generating heat. Various factors influence the thermal energy requirements: the transfer of heat in the heating chest, heat losses in the exhaust air, the loading of the ironers and the moisture of the linen. In a field experiment, the use of the newly developed chest ironer enabled the overall energy consumption to be reduced, whereby the heat was generated using a natural gas-fired burner. An improved control system manages the temperature of the heating band technology, which is heated with thermal oil. An air-water heat exchanger recycles part of the waste heat at the end. This has enabled the energy consumption of the overall system to be roughly halved.
It is primarily flatwork linen that is ironed (sheets, bed and table linen). Once the linen is washed, it still has 50% moisture in it. In this condition it is ironed in a flatwork chest ironer. Depending on the quality and type of the textile, this is conducted at a temperature of around 200 °C and at an 80-mbar contact pressure. The moisture in the linen protects against the high temperatures during the ironing and its value at the end still amounts to 2%. This enables the linen to be then folded and delivered.