CASE STUDY

Laundry with a ‘clean sheet’

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

Read how Dutch laundry Newasco De Hoop planned for highly efficient use of process water and energy at their newly built plant.

Newasco De Hoop’s Story

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 still 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 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. For over 10 years Newasco De Hoop has offered a Mobile Linen Room Service, whereby personal garments for care home residents are collected and then delivered back clean and folded into the resident’s own wardrobe, a logistical tour-de-force.

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 complete new laundry on a developing industrial estate in Amersfoort.

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Retaining efficiency in a new, bigger laundry

Director Marc Nieuwland led the planning for the project and there is much to tell 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. There was significant input from Wientjens’ partner Ecolab, who is also Newasco’s detergent supplier, around wash process choices.

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 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. Four factors were key:

1. Keeping the wash process as simple and straightfoward as possible

2. Choosing washer capacities with an eye to enhancing the water recycling loops

3. Understanding exactly which re-use solution fitted best for a given water/energy stream

4. Choosing the optimum constellation of Wientjens equipment for quick payback on investment

The Choices

Thanks to their understanding of Newasco’s textile mix and of Wientjens equipment, Ecolab was able to advise a more streamlined wash set-up than in the old situation, which would furthermore ensure the most efficient use possible of water and energy.

The decision was taken early on to use a new, 3 tonne gas-fired steam boiler for process water heating. A flue gas condensor 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 coloured personal garments (40°C). A second new tunnel washer was installed to wash the main volume of white flat linen. 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 colour. 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.

The Solutions

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 process expertise came to the fore.

All washwater from the flatwork (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 offers sufficient capacity and process flexibility.

The treated water (filtrate) from the flatwork (whites) tunnel washer is then re-used in the personal garments (coloureds) tunnel washer.

This setup eliminated the need for complex tunnel batch washer systems with separate white and coloured tanks. Such a setup would ultimately not have been used efficiently because the water quality in the coloured 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 coloured 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, with any necessary temperature top-up coming from the boiler flue gas condensor. The average temperature is around 46°C to 48°C. The AquaEnergy System can moreover 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.

Results

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, fresh water usage is low, although the laundry is not (yet!) washing at capacity, figures for the whites tunnel is 2.5 l/kg and for coloureds around 5 l/kg, the latter higher due to smaller volumes of personal garments. Fresh water 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.

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.

Our Takeaway

This was a completely new laundry set-up, allowing opportunity to design for optimal performance. Thanks to Wientjens’ long-standing collaboration with Ecolab, the knowledge was there to design a considered 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.

At Wientjens, we take pride in being part of Newasco De Hoop’s continuing story of excellence.

Explore our full range of water and energy recycling products here.

Recycling has not only saved