Helping To Reduce Plastic Waste
Plastic bottles are bad news for the planet. It takes at least 450 years for a plastic bottle to completely degrade, and more than a million of them are sold every minute around the world, with the vast majority ending up in landfills. Plastic is derived from materials made from fossil fuels, which means the production of all those bottles also creates billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases.
As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of bottled drinks, the Coca-Cola Company recognizes its responsibility to help solve the global plastic waste issue, and through its World Without Waste program, it is committed to developing a circular economic system aimed at eliminating waste through the continual use of existing resources. It aims to make 100% of its packaging recyclable by 2025 and to use at least 50% recycled material by 2030.
The program can be seen in action in Vietnam, where the company recently announced the launch of bottles made from 100% recycled food-grade polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) plastic across the country. It hopes to reduce its use of new plastic in Vietnam by two thousand metric tons per year.
The bottles are manufactured at Coca-Cola Vietnam’s factory in Hanoi with the help of Güntner technology. The factory recently needed to replace an aging zinc condenser and plate heat exchanger for the cooling system on its bottle extrusion line, and the company wanted a solution with sustainability in mind.
Together with contractor Thuan Phat Refrigeration, Electrical, Thermal, and Mechanical JSC-REMCO and the Coca-Cola technical team, Güntner devised a cooling solution that would meet the capacity of the production line while also having a positive environmental impact: the Güntner ECOSS™ G3 Evaporative Condenser, using ammonia as a refrigerant. Other than water, ammonia is the only refrigerant that has both a global warming potential and ozone depletion potential of zero. Güntner’s ECOSS™ Evaporative Condensers are no larger nor less affordable than traditional cooling towers but use only half as much water and energy.
“In Hanoi, there are two seasons—hot and cold—and during the cold season, the cooling system needs to operate very little,” says Tin Nguyen. “Controlling the fans reduces the load on both the heat exchanger and the cooling system as a whole, saving between 30% and 50% of energy consumption compared with the previous solution. Water consumption is also reduced."
More durable than traditional galvanized-steel cooling towers, the stainless-steel ECOSS™ Evaporative Condensers are highly resistant to corrosion and scaling, leading to less, or even zero, dependence on chemical water treatment, enabling decade-long product lifecycles. A range of other benefits include an optimized funnel shape in the sump, reducing the required volume of cooling water by 50%, and a design that makes for easy maintenance.