United Hospital Services is home to some of the most state of the art equipment in the laundry industry. Unlike your home laundry equipment which might consist of a hamper, washer, dryer, an iron and an ironing board, the equipment utilized at UHS is highly specialized and helps UHS to process millions of pounds of linen a year.

Receiving

Linen is received by UHS in individual plastic bags which are placed into carts at customers sites. Once the carts are received at UHS the bags are emptied and sent to a soil sort platform via a conveyor. It is here that the laundry is separated into their respective category of linen. The linen is placed into large bags and when the bag reaches a certain weight the bag will then move along an overhead rail system to be washed.

Material Handling

Laundry is moved primarily through the use of an overhead rail system. This computer controlled rail system allows for the intelligent navigation of linen throughout the laundry. It also allows for the storage of sorted laundry off the floor and in the air which frees up valuable floor space.

Washing

Washing millions of pounds of laundry is no small undertaking. In order to process this amount of linen UHS utilizes CBW (Continuous Batch Washers) also known as tunnels to wash the majority of the linen. These large washers are school bus sized washers that are able to process linen as they move through individual pockets. Each pocket performs a part of the wash process. This allows for a variety of goods to be washed continually while saving water and chemicals.

The second type of washers that UHS utilizes is in the form of washer-extractors. These washers are similar to your washer at home, except they are capable of washing from 85 pound loads all the way up to 800 pounds per load.

Extraction

Washing linen has one obvious result which is wet linen. The process of removing moisture from the linen is a two-fold process. The first phase is the extraction of water from the linen by using one of two methods.

The first method is the same way that your washer at home removes the majority of the moisture from each load of laundry; by spinning the laundry. At UHS we utilize large centrifugal extractors for this purpose. Each centrifugal extractor is able to remove moisture from hundreds of pounds of linen at a time.

The second method to remove excess moisture from linen that UHS utilizes is by the use of extractor presses. These large and powerful machines literally squeeze the moisture out of linen. By using thousands of pounds of force the wet linen is pressed into a cake and then sent be dried.

Drying

Drying linen is the second phase of removing moisture from linen. In order to dry thousands of pounds of linen a day UHS uses dozens of large dryers. These dryers feature large drums and are attached to a specialized lint collection system that helps to control lint on the linen and in the atmosphere. The process of moving goods from the extractors to the dryers is accomplished through the use of computerized shuttles.