Industrial Shelving Manufacturer, Quincy, MI
An investment-grade audit by engineers from the Delta P2E2 Center found more than a dozen opportunities for a shelving manufacturer in Quincy, Michigan, to save money by using energy more efficiently—even though the facility was extremely well run.
The company manufactures custom industrial shelves and ships them via flatbed trucks for onsite assembly at the customer’s facility. Manufacturing operations in the 330,000 square foot plant include metal machining, welding, a five-stage wash and rinse system, and painting.
If the Quincy company were to implement all of the audit’s recommendations, the facility would realize annual electricity savings of 15 percent and natural gas savings of 18 percent.
Implementing these projects would benefit the environment, too, by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, criteria pollutants, and volatile organic compounds:
Powder Coating Paint Manufacturer, Caledonia, MI
An investment-grade audit conducted by Delta P2E2 engineers at a Michigan-based powder coating paint manufacturer found that one relatively simple process change could save the company more than $180,000 a year and also produce significant environmental benefits.
At the factory, powder coat pigments are mixed, processed via mechanical heating and extrusion, and packaged. Facility operations include mechanical mixing of dry and wet raw materials, heated extrusion, packaging, and quality control activities. The company wants to expand capacity by 300,000 pounds of product per year.
The facility currently uses approximately 123,100 CCF of natural gas per year at a total cost of $95,400. Electricity costs come to $225,600 per year for approximately 3.4 million kWH.
Delta’s analysis of plant operations identified a total of 11 opportunities to conserve energy and reduce pollution. Further technical underwriting determined which opportunities were most feasible and eliminated four. The Delta P2E2 Center is putting together a financing package to help the company move forward on the remaining seven projects.
Currently, the company uses its entire production line to
test for quality assurance. When technicians identify product that is not up to
standards, time and effort are required to rework the nonconforming product
back into the system.
Delta P2E2 engineers collaborated with the company’s maintenance and technical staff to conceptualize and refine a different approach: installing a small-scale (bench-size) powder-coat line to test batch samples for quality. The sample prep line will free up the full-scale line to manufacture product rather than test it. Doing so will boost plant capacity and improve efficiency while reducing the company’s environmental footprint. Installing a sample prep line will reduce the amount of nonconforming product and also reduce solid waste—including waste PVC, resins, fine dust, and off-specification product—which the company currently pays to send to an off-site landfill. There’s an upstream benefit, as well—fewer raw materials will produce the same amount of product. Simply by installing the prep line and upgrading the facility’s lighting, the company can realize significant environmental and economic benefits.
Automotive Industry Supplier - Chesterfield, MI
An investment grade audit of a plant in Chesterfield, Michigan, shows how even small, relatively inexpensive process changes can start paying off in less than a year, and over the long term return many times their initial cost.
A 50,000-square-foot paint stripping facility in Chesterfield, Michigan, is a major supplier to the automotive industry, and its quality management system meets international standards (ISO 9000 certified). The plant performs two types of processes: paint stripping of metal parts, and chemical blending. Paint is removed thermally (by pyrolytic ovens), chemically, and physically (by blasting with zinc shot or water). Electricity and natural gas run these processes. Maintaining the temperature of the chemical baths and running the paint-stripping ovens are the primary energy uses in the plant, although energy is also used to heat the facility.
The following table summarizes the facility’s energy, water, and chemical use.
Delta P2E2 Center engineers came up with twelve recommendations to help the company operate more efficiently. Of these, technical underwriting eliminated six projects as infeasible. A cost/benefit analysis of the remaining six looks like this.
Company managers are hesitant to implement the first three projects on grounds that the payback period is too long, and projected savings insufficient, to justify the cost. Projects 4-6, however, are extremely affordable. Each project will pay back the initial investment many times over during the next five years.
The first two projects promise the most significant environmental benefits, as shown below. The Delta P2E2 Center has offered to arrange a financing package to make these projects more affordable.
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