Very large commercial laundries represent a potential market for Vincent equipment. This is particularly true of laundries that do industrial uniforms and wipe rags as these contain grease that blinds competitive screening devises. This application is important because of the desire by laundries to recycle and re-use their hot water.

Another need at a laundry exists because of the fees associated with sewering water containing muck and lint. Muck is the residue that is filtered from wash water; typically it consists of dirt, lint and grease. Lint is also cleaned from the exhaust gas of the dryers; it is normally sluiced with water into a small bag filter.

The Vincent system for filtering these flows requires a pump to pull water from a sump into a Fiber Filter. Sludge from the Fiber Filter are in turn fed into a Series KP screw press.

For the system to operate effectively, the washer water first must be run through basket filters ahead of the Fiber Filter. This is done to catch rags and strings that will tend to foul the equipment. These baskets are normally below the floor level in the path between the washers and the wash water sump.

The Fiber Filter works well at separating thin concentrations of muck from the large volumes of water (200 to 800 gpm) that are discharged from the washing machines. At the same time it easily handles the thicker lint slurry from the cyclone separator used with the dryers. A chief advantage of the Fiber Filter is that it is self cleaning, in contrast to conventional dewatering screens (gravity, vibratory, and drum types).

When the sludge from the Fiber Filter is run through the screw press, more water is removed. The press cake is quite dry and ideally suited for landfill. It does not drip, which facilitates handling and transport.

Many laundries use flocculation systems for final cleaning of their waste water. This requires the use of a polymer additive, which is a significant operating expense. We have one case where the use of the Fiber Filter reduced this expense by two thirds.