Every day, the Pauli laundry in Annerod cleans seven tonnes of laundry for hospitals, retirement homes, hotels and restaurants. During the daily laundry and cleaning process, the industrial laundry even provides an additional benefit: Heat. The traditional family-run company knows how to utilise the waste heat it generates and feeds heat into the district heating network of Stadtwerke Gießen AG (SWG).
"We welcome Wäscherei Pauli's decision to utilise district heating efficiently," commented Reinhard Paul, Technical Director of SWG.
To achieve this advantage, an additional heat exchanger was installed in the laundry's plant. The new heat exchanger is located behind the steam boiler, which cools the exhaust gases from the steam boiler from 200 degrees to around 100 degrees and heats the heating water from 50 degrees to 85 degrees. The laundry requires steam at a temperature of 180 degrees. Heat with a lower temperature level can therefore not be utilised for the laundry. "We could optimally heat a swimming pool with our waste heat, but the temperature is simply too low for internal use," says Torben Günther, Managing Director of Wäscherei Pauli. However, this heat can be ideally utilised in SWG's district heating network in Annerod. The remaining waste heat is therefore utilised sensibly throughout the year. The benefit can be measured: Around 90 thousand kWh of heat are generated with the system. This has improved the boiler efficiency by over four per cent. The cost of installing the heat exchanger is 5 thousand euros. The money was shared between the laundry and the Giessen public utility company.
For more information on district heating, call the service hotline on 0180 22 11 100 from Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Anyone interested in this topic should definitely contact Stadtwerke Gießen.