Water, energy and dollars—all valuable resources—were going down the drain to keep Hallmark foil and emboss die presses cool. Then a team of Hallmark engineers came up with an idea for a better system that would save money and help the environment. And that’s the kind of solution Hallmark likes.

Brad Krehbiel, Hallmark design administrator for corporate facilities, explains that presses generate a lot of heat. With the old system, city water—3 million gallons of it a year—was used to cool the presses and dies.

“With this method of cooling, the water goes down the drain after it goes through the press or die chiller one time, and city water really isn’t cold enough in the summer to do a good job cooling the equipment,” Krehbiel says. “On top of that, Kansas City has to treat 3 million gallons of water before it comes to us, and treat it all again after it goes down the drain.”

Krehbiel designed the system, which takes advantage of a closed-loop chilled-water system already used at headquarters for air conditioning. A new heat exchanger uses chilled water to keep the cooling water at a constant 48 degrees. A pump then circulates it through the presses and die chillers and back to the heat exchanger for continual reuse.

“Water is a precious natural resource,” Krehbiel says. “It makes sense, both environmentally and economically, to reuse the water over and over instead of wasting it down the drain. It was just one of those win-win ideas.”

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