Woods Equipment Company
Oregon, Illinois
Mark Misek
Northern Illinois University, DeKalb
Woods Equipment Company has been producing high quality tractor-powered
equipment since 1946. Oregon, Illinois, is Woods Equipment’s corporate
headquarters. The 400,000 square feet manufacturing facility in Oregon employs
400 people. The facility produces high quality tractor-powered equipment
and accessories that includes rotary cutters, turf batwing cutters, landscape
rakes, box scrapers, snow blowers, and backhoes.
One of the projects dealt with the investigation of retrofitting the liquid
propane (LP) powered forklifts with compressed natural gas (CNG). The other
project would look into ways to minimizing the wastewater from the medium-sized
paint line.
Results:
Retrofitting the forklifts to run on CNG instead of LP proves to be very
costly with a long payback period of over 12 years. However, implementation
of the proposed system will improve indoor air quality.
On the medium-sized paint line, the intern suggested utilizing a counter-flow
rinse scheme by directing rinsewater from stage 4 to stage 2 on the medium-sized
paint line. Then, by installing a reverse osmosis system on stage 2 to filter
and clean the water, it can be reused back on stage 4. This can result in
a savings of $105,000 per year.
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