Working conditions at the famous Waterford Crystal’s factory in County Waterford, Ireland have drastically improved following the installation of 18 Breezair TBA. The decision to spot cool operators instead of trying to cool the entire plant has resulted in employees benefiting from temperatures of 20°C instead of previous highs of 35°C.
The installation of the Breezair system was undertaken as part of an overall upgrading of the plant, which alsoincluded replacing the old kiln with a new tank furnace.
“The DX Condenser used to cool the factory was totally inefficient and had to be scrapped”, said Padraig O’Mahoney, Project Engineer at Winthrop Engineering. “Instead of trying to cool the plant it was agreed to design a system to cool the operators. This has proved extremely successful and far more cost effective”.
To kick off the operation, Seeley Europe calculated the air volume needed for the area and designed a ducting system based on this volume. They then worked out the number of Breezair units needed to cool the glass blowing platform, eachoperating station and production equipment. A joint plenum was then installed with two ducts, one going to the production area and the other to the blowing platform. Grill outlets where then fitted to send cooled air to the different locations.
Producing the famous Waterford crystal begins with batch material made up of Litharge, Silica Sand and Potash together with smaller quantities of other chemicals being fed into a furnace. Here, red-hot molten crystal is transformed using wooden tools to shaping the molten crystal before being channelled to different production processes. The intense heat expelled from the furnace is retained throughout the process and transferred to the workstations causing extremely high temperatures
“The Breezair system has worked really well and there have been some very positive benefits”, says Louis Corrigan, Project, Building & Utilities Manager at Waterford Crystal. “We have a much happier workforce and this has positive effects on absenteeism and production.”
