With Governor Brown’s recent announcement of emergency actions to reduce water use, water saving in California is on everyone’s mind. One of the most effective ways to save water is through identifying and retrofitting water-consuming process loads.
Altura worked with a hospital client to audit the energy and water use of their sterilization facility. We installed power and water metering to establish a baseline use and identified an opportunity to modernize the sterilizers used for instrument preparation with equipment that uses cooling plant water for condensate quenching, eliminating a blow-down condensate tempering system. The new equipment uses chilled water for the cooling needs of the equipment, and in the four months since installation has saved 93% water usage in the baseline period with no reduction in throughput. Annually this equipment will save 7.1 million gallons of water.
In addition to the direct water and energy savings, Altura worked with the water authority to secure incentives for the project totaling more than $80,000 and provided the required water savings verification after the project’s installation.
Most people familiar with Altura think of us in the context of controls and intelligent energy efficiency, but one of the things we pride ourselves on is being able to consider all aspects of resource use in our clients’ facilities – not just energy. Your industrial or health care facility can be a part of the solution, let us show you how.
