Clean sweep

Ball Packaging Europe, a manufacturer of beverage cans, regularly reviews opportunities for reducing energy consumption.

Its goal is to reduce the carbon footprint of its beverage cans by 25% by 2020.

Our commitment to reducing energy consumption led us to look in detail at all our equipment, and the opportunity to replace aging pumps within our high pressure can cleaners has resulted in the most significant energy cost saving to date

Ball Packaging Europe’s John Cosgrove

When the company identified its high-pressure can cleaners as an area for improvement, they called in industrial maintenance, repair and overhaul specialist Brammer to conduct an extensive audit.

Each of the two production lines at Ball’s Rugby site is supplied with hot water by five immersible pumps.

The Brammer team, led by Del Tiwana who specialises in beverage and packaging manufacturing processes, found that the 10 pumps within the can cleaners were at least 20 years old.

It identified this as an opportunity to upgrade to more modern, energyefficient models.

With a run time of 8,400 hours per annum, based on the pumps running 24/7 for 50 weeks of the year, Brammer discovered potential energy savings of more than 450,000 KWHh/yr.

With a clear opportunity to provide more efficient, cost effective pumps, which would reduce consumption and optimise flow, Brammer worked with its strategic partner Grundfos pumps to recommend replacements and carry out initial energy monitoring conducted over the course of three visits.

New Grundfos MTRE64 and MTRE45 series pumps were installed as part of a fully integrated pump, motor and variable speed drive package, selected on the basis of the warranty and support available from Brammer.

“Following our assessment and recommendations, our technical engineers moved in to carry out reference point testing to determine the potential energy savings,” says Tiwana, the key account development manager.

Two motors were run simultaneously, powering an old pump and replacement model, to check power consumption and establish a baseline for comparison.

“With the customer satisfied with the projected savings, we went ahead with full installation including managing custom fabrication of mounts and pump optimisation for the application,” he says.

The result was a significant reduction in energy usage, says Tiwana, and the associated cost savings have provided Ball Packaging with a return on investment in only 12 months, with projected savings set to rise beyond £400,000 in the next 10 years.

John Cosgrove, plant systems manager at Ball Packaging Europe, says: “Our commitment to reducing energy consumption led us to look in detail at all our equipment, and the opportunity to replace aging pumps within our high pressure can cleaners has resulted in the most significant energy cost saving to date”.

“We were impressed with the thorough up-front audit from Brammer, as well as the comparison testing and custom fabrication the team were able to provide.”

He says that the installation was quick and caused negligible disruption to production processes.

“Ultimately, the fact that we were able to make a dramatic reduction in our energy usage is by far the best outcome of this project, and we are now looking at how we can replicate these results at our other sites.”