Fillongley Spring Water has one of the UK’s most efficient bottling facilities and offers a high-speed and cost-effective way for bottled water cooler distributors to access the high-quality product demanded by their customers. 

With demand increasing, Fillongley needed a new bottling line. However, with the two existing Fulton boilers not having the capacity to reach the target temperature for the new plant’s washing line, Fillongley started looking at alternative steam raising solutions.

Technical and quality manager Martin Whitehead, says: “We looked at several alternatives – including vertical and horizontal firetube boilers – but, with advice from our main contractors and installer, a decision to specify one of Fulton’s recently-launched VSRT-30 steam boilers was taken and, overall, the results have exceeded expectations.”

Instead of running two boilers for the washing line, a single VSRT boiler is now being used to achieve an increased target temperature of 60°C for the detergent. The combination of the new line and Fulton’s energy-efficient VSRT also means the company has been able to increase the throughput of the line by 40% – from 1200 bottles per hour to 2000 – and Fillongley has reduced its gas consumption by about a third.

“A reduction in gas consumption wasn’t something we set out to achieve, so this is a real bonus for the company and means the payback period for the bottling line is reduced.” says Whitehead.

It is within the bottle washer that, via a heat exchanger, steam from Fulton’s VSRT vertical boiler is used to heat the detergent. The company also took the decision to retain the existing vertical steam boilers for duty-standby purposes.

The VSRT is the first steam boiler to emerge from Fulton’s new ‘PURE Technology’ approach, an initiative that’s resulted in a design that is durable, long-lasting and boasts high efficiencies and ultra-low NOx emissions as standard. This new approach aims to enhance heat transfer, provide class-leading efficiencies, improve steam quality and reduce NOx emissions.

Rather than further-improve products like its J Series to achieve these goals, PURE Technology – the culmination of Fulton’s clean slate approach to design – is said to challenge the industry status quo on conventional boiler design by engineering solutions that are fit-for-purpose and fully-optimised for all applications.