Geothermal energy heats up, cools off Booneville factory

Rockline Industries is using geothermal technology to heat and cool its Booneville wet-wipe plant and is considering using a similar system at its new Russellville operation.

Geothermal systems use pipes buried deep underground that act as a heat sink to heat or cool a building. The ground acts as a better exchange medium than outside air, producing better energy efficiency in most cases.

Nick Santoleri, vice president of manufacturing for Rockline, oversaw the installation of the system at the Booneville plant in Logan County. He said it is part of the company's commitment to sustainability. In 2008, the company established sustainability goals to reduce waste and carbon emissions in all its operations.

The company wants to eventually become independent of fossil fuels. Shifting the Booneville plant from a conventional heating and cooling system is expected to reduce Rockline's companywide greenhouse-gas emissions by 25 percent, besting its five-year goal to reduce emissions by 15 percent by the end of 2015.

While the decision to put the system in wasn't based on cost savings, it is expected to reduce the plant's overall energy and natural gas use by 65 percent. A company spokesman said the project received no state incentives but could not comment on other incentives. Santoleri declined to say how much the company invested in the system.

"While it wasn't necessarily the most economic thing, it was the best thing," he said.

Rockline employs about 2,000 worldwide and makes consumer, health care, industrial and institutional wet wipes as well as coffee filters. In addition to the Booneville and Russellville plants, Rockline has an operation in Springdale. A company spokesman declined to say how many people the plants employ in Arkansas.

Privately held Rockline was founded in 1976 and also has plants in Sheboygan, Wis., its headquarters, and in New Jersey, England and South China.

Santoleri said the Booneville plant, which the company purchased in 2007, had one thing that the other company locations, except Russellville, don't have -- lots of land. The plant has 1.2 million square feet, or 27 acres, under the roof. It also has more than 100 acres of additional land, which allows for the installation of the wells needed for geothermal heating and cooling.

The system at the Booneville plant has 240 wells, at least 20 feet apart and 400 deep that cover more than 5 acres. In total, the closed-loop system has more than 36 miles of pipes. It was installed in three phases, along with various plant upgrades, with the whole process, including planning, taking more than three years to complete.

In April, Rockline said it purchased a plant in Russellville as part of the company's expansion plans. The 240,000-square-foot complex sits on a 30-acre site but what will be produced there has not been revealed.

The available land makes the Russellville plant a candidate for a similar system, and the company is looking into that possibility, Santoleri said.

Multi-Craft Contractors of Springdale and Pinnacle Energy Services of Fayetteville worked with Rockline on the Booneville project.

Mike Jones, project manager for Multi-Craft Contractors, said the Trane system is modular, allowing for future expansion. In addition to the cost savings, it allows Rockline precise control of humidity and temperature, something that's vital for the company's production process, he said.

He said Rockline's approach to the project was unique. The company wasn't looking for the least expensive way to do things -- instead, it sought quality and a system that could be easily upgraded and had long-term viability.

"That way you avoid hiccups and headaches," Jones said.

He added the land that the plant sits on had a characteristic that made it more suitable than most -- ample groundwater. Pockets of water allow the heat to simply be carried away, he said, noting that eventually over many decades, wells without access to water will heat the land around them and become less viable.

He said the system at the Rockline plant is likely the largest, and perhaps the only one of its kind, in a production facility. He said other large locations that use geothermal systems, like schools, tend to be large but are made of many smaller systems while the Rockline plant is effectively one system.

Rockline's Santoleri said heating and cooling systems in a production operations tend to have one thing in common -- noise and lots of it. He got a surprise, while visiting the Booneville plant, when he asked when the new system was going to go into service.

"I was told 'It's already running,'" he said.

Business on 06/16/2014

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