A wonder with waste water

Peterlee Glass Company was having a real problem with waste water from its many glass processing machines – especially the straight line edgers – which was remedied with the installation of a centrifuge water treatment system.

As a result of poor previous factory design before Peterlee moved in, waste water was channelled straight to utility water drains. Being an environmentally friendly company Peterlee Glass knew they could not dispose of water to drain as this was both opposite to their view on conservation and the environment, and would have contravened utility water laws.

Consequently, the company was spending £thousands on harvesting water to IBC container storage tanks, for disposal via a wet waste hydro cleansing facility.

In order to amortise costs, Flat Glass Solutions also suggested Peterlee Glass Company could install a duplex system, meaning two vertical straight line edgers could be run through the same water treatment system.

By careful design, and in collaboration with Dieffe of Italy, a single 3,000 litre per hour centrifuge was strategically placed between the machines. Using a small clean water holding tank after the centrifuge means that one or both of the edgers can be used at any time.

“In the first week alone, nearly 500kgs of glass fines and waste was collected from the edgers, demonstrating the centrifuge’s efficiency,” Dave Cahill, from Flat Glass Solutions, said.

Gary Dobson, operations director at Peterlee Glass Company, said: “There’s not many things that impress me in the glass industry these days, but this centrifuge is one of them.”

The centrifuge is semi automated and, via an audible and visual alarm, indicates to the operator that it is time to clean the drum. This is less than a two-minute job as Flat Glass Solutions supplies its centrifuges with a spare drum for minimum production interruption.

Dave is now working closely with Gary to extend the water treatment in the factory to include the horizontal CNC equipment, including recycling for use through the spindle.

This is expected to make considerable savings on not only water bills, but also giving longer machine life due to having cleaner water in the system.

Dave Cahill said there are a number of reasons for using centrifugal water treatment systems.

“Semi dry waste can be recycled, there are no messy wet waste areas, it is environmentally friendly, there are no flocculent additives, it is easy to use, water usage is reduced, water costs are lower, machines and tools last longer, it saves space, and running costs are reduced,” he said.

Flat Glass Solutions in combination with Dieffe, will be demonstrating this machine at Glasstec.