Glass container manufacturer Verallia, has reduced energy consumption dramatically by finding and minimizing compressed air waste in its pneumatic systems. Verallia is a subsidiary of Saint Gobain that produces more than a million wine and champagne bottles every day in its Madera, CA, plant. That task requires a huge amount of glass feedstock. It also requires compressed air, and lots of it. Glass making is a pneumatics-intensive business, and on a typical day Verallia's plant uses about 13,000 cubic ft/min (cfm) of compressed air. The glass-making operations consume about 10,000 cfm of the total, mostly air that blows the near-molten bottles into shape. Another 3,000 cfm drives the pneumatics for the plant's packaging lines, which include a collection of case packers, box machines, lane dividers and unitizers. All that air does not come cheap. "A lot of people think air is free, but it's actually the most expensive consumable we produce," says Greg Rhames, Verallia's energy and asset reliability manager in Madera. How expensive? Rhames estimates that the plant's air costs $120 per cfm on an annual basis-or more than $1.56 million/year for Verallia. Cost aside, air utilization also has sustainability implications, which is an important consideration for Verallia. As the only glass producer to have won an Energy Star award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a feat it has accomplished for three years running, Verallia has a strong track record when it comes to reducing its energy consumption and carbon footprint.
