Cutco Cutlery Corporation (Cutco), located in Olean, NY, is a manufacturer of kitchen knives with a production process that involves heat treating, grinding, polishing, cleaning, injection molding, and assembly. Cutco employs approximately 650 people and has produced knives for 75 years.
Challenge
Most of the water used during Cutco’s manufacturing process is non-contact cooling water. Cutco requested assistance from Insyte Consulting (Insyte) to identify opportunities to reduce cooling water use.
Solutions
Insyte partnered with the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I) to perform a baseline analysis to understand all water use, discharge amounts, and water quality at the Cutco facility. NYSP2I collected water samples and operation data during site visits. Using the data, NYSP2I assisted Cutco in updating the company’s baseline water map, evaluated new process flows that would help achieve source reduction, assessed the facility’s reverse osmosis system, and supported economic analysis on the new process flow configurations.
Results
The work performed by NYSP2I and Insyte led to the following results:
- Baseline water map detailing Cutco’s water use and wastewater discharge for future performance and evaluation.
- Phase 1: Water use reduction of 36,600 gal/day and cost savings of $196,500/year, which includes operational changes and temperature optimization in heat treating and freezer operations (implemented).
- Phase 2: Water use reduction of 4,800 gal/day and cost savings of $25,600/year, which includes installation of a reclaim tank to reuse discharge water from a cleaning operation (implemented).
- Phase 3: Expected water use reduction of 46,300 gal/day and cost savings of $249,000/year, which will involve the use of two additional reclaim tanks to capture and divert non-contact cooling water from the heat-treating operation (not yet implemented at time of this report).
- Phase 4: Expected water use reduction of 35,900 gal/day and cost savings of $192,500/year, which will involve recycling of non-contact cooling water from the mold shop multiple times (not yet implemented at time of this report).
Cutco has already realized significant savings with the implementation of Phases 1 and 2. Phase 3 is underway with expected high savings. Total savings from all four phases is anticipated to be ~123,000 gal/day of water and ~$660,000/year.
