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The easiest energy savings follow the same philosophy as the easiest safety improvements. If it does not exist, it cannot hurt you or consume energy.

Your first reaction will be this: we don't operate anything we don't need in order to run our facility. Really? I'll bet I could find all sorts of things to turn off or modify in your facility.

Let's go for the big stuff first. If you are a recycled containerboard facility, why are you running refiners? I know a number of such facilities that never even installed refiners. Do they do some other things, such as run more starch? Yes. But they are realizing very large energy savings simply by not having refiners and they are still selling all the board they can make.

Vacuum pumps are the silent energy consumers. When was the last time you checked all your vacuum piping for leaks? Do you know how to check it for leaks? Are all your vacuum consumers (table boxes, uhle boxes, suction rolls and so forth) set for the proper slot widths per the manufacturers' standards? When you replace vacuum pumps, do you replace in kind or have you looked at some of the latest high efficiency models?

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Pumps and process piping are another source of energy waste. Several things are going on here. It is remarkable, when one looks at the as-installed systems, how much energy is wasted just chasing streams around in circles. Even worse is the situation when a mill pushes through too much water because of poor water management. Once, I reduced a mill's sewer bill by over 80% by better water management (I had to put in one used pump and 50 feet of pipe, but it was worth over $400,000 per month in savings).

Then there are pumps that are throttled or have recirculation lines. Either size the pump correctly or, better yet, put in a VFD (Variable Frequency Drive) unit.

Many mills are going around and replacing lights with modern ones of various designs. This is worth doing, too.

Still, the best thing to do is eliminate energy consumers all together. I'll bet I could walk into any mill and shut down 10% of the energy consumers and not affect the performance of that mill one bit. I think I could do that three years in a row in the same mill before it would become challenging. There is one big "but" to this, however--the management and personnel of that mill have to be willing to go along with this move and be willing to do without their "security blanket," be it a pump, a fan, or whatever it may be.

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Now, I did not plan this when I started this article, but it occurs to me that I would be remiss if I did not mention one of our great advertisers right here in this column. That is Airmaster Aerators. Airmaster offers the most energy efficient, high performance aerator on the market today. You see their advertisements all over our media sites. If you are operating effluent ponds and are not using Airmaster Aerators, you are wasting a tremendous amount of energy.

So, turn things off, buy efficient modern replacements and reduce your energy bill. It is really quite simple.

What do you think? What can you turn off? Please take our quiz this week.

For safety this week, just like I started this column comparing safety to energy savings, we'll end the same way. If you can eliminate an energy consumer, no one can become injured on an energy source that does not exist.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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