July 13, 2007 -- Trinity Printing Midlands has overcome the industry-wide problem of handling the waste water created by spray dampening facilities, following successful trials of the UK’s first Longlife Filtration Cleaning Management (LCM) system from Baldwin Technology.  The new Baldwin equipment has been fitted to a 12-unit Goss Colorliner press at the company’s Birmingham plant, which prints titles such as the Mirror, Sunday Mirror, the People and the Birmingham Post & Mail.
 
“All spray dampening systems create waste water during operation and because this is contaminated with fount solution it has to be removed by specialist waste collection firms,” says operations manager Alex Henderson.  “The spray dampening system on our Goss Colorliner creates one litre of waste water per hour of press operation on each couple.  With 96 couples, and with the press line in use most of the day, we were generating such significant amounts of waste water that it was costing us more than £20,000 per annum to have it removed.
 
“In addition, we had the cost of the water in the first place and we also had to replace about 4,000 litres of fount solution additive per year because about two per cent of additive was lost with the spray dampening waste water.  On top of this there are obviously environmental issues to take into account, so when we heard of Baldwin’s new LCM technology we were keen to test it.  Baldwin fitted the equipment within half a day last September and has worked closely with us to tailor the system and monitor the performance.  Since its installation, the waste water from our spray dampening system has been reduced from about 16,500 litres per month to 100 litres.”