Environmental Stewardship
Prestige-Pak's green efforts grow on Arbor Day
In conjunction with Fond du Lac Boy Scout Troop 705, Prestige-Pak will host its second-annual Arbor Day event April 29, 2011. As part of the company's carbon reduction efforts, the flexible packager partnered with this same troop as in 2010 to plant more than 400 trees in the Fond du Lac community. This year they hope to place another 200 cedars and 100 pines in an adjacent space.
It's not just about increasing production for Prestige-Pak's president, Vince Kuber; it's also about being an environmentally conscious neighbor.
"In the printing industry, you get to a point where expansion is necessary to keep good customers whose needs have grown beyond your capabilities," Kuber said. Prestige-Pak customers were looking for better quality graphics and 8-color printing, which they couldn't provide with their existing presses.
The addition of a new press was necessary to satisfy primary customers and increase the company's market share, but it required additional equipment that they hadn't initially planned on purchasing. The presses that the company had been utilizing allowed them to operate without any air pollution control equipment. Under the Federal Clean Air Regulations, the new equipment would put Prestige-Pak over the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) limit of 100 tons of per year for Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) at a single facility.
To limit the initial capital cost of a VOC abatement system, Prestige-Pak considered purchasing a used catalytic oxidizer. Thermal and catalytic oxidizers are used in a wide variety of industries for the destruction of air pollutants regulated by government agencies.
These process emissions are destroyed through the process of high temperature combustion, requiring some type of fossil fuel for destruction, which emit Green House Gas emissions as a by-product. After consulting with engineers at Anguil Environmental Systems, Kuber realized that a new Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer (RTO) would not only save them $130,000 in operating costs per year, but also would mean a dramatic decrease in Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Nitrous Oxides (NOX) when compared to the used catalytic system.
Prestige-Pak commissioned Anguil to install a 15,000 SCFM, dual chamber RTO capable of handling emissions from their four presses with the capacity for two more 8- or 10-color machines. The oxidizer achieves destruction through the process of high temperature thermal oxidation, converting the VOCs to carbon dioxide and water vapor while reusing more than 95 percent of the released thermal energy to preheat the incoming emission laden airstream. The high energy recovery within these oxidizers reduces the natural gas consumption required for VOC destruction and saves operating costs.
The wisdom of the decision to purchase the newer technology was not truly recognized by Kuber until the equipment start-up and destruction efficiency testing. Not only was the Anguil system destroying 99.3 percent of all VOCs from their process, it was operating without any natural gas as long as Prestige-Pak was running one press or more.
Recognizing that the facility can never reduce their carbon emissions completely, Kuber says they will continually look for ways to improve efficiency throughout the plant and reduce the company's carbon footprint.
"Because trees absorb CO2 throughout their life cycle, we feel as though these Arbor Day events are very important to part of our environmental responsibility," he said.
