Enormous Energy Savings for Packaging Process

Fresh and ready-to-eat salads, vegetable dishes, herbs, and freshly minimize fruit kind part of Gartenfrisch Jung GmbH’s product portfolio. The long-established company has evolved into the German market chief for recent comfort merchandise due to its quality and experience. Since early 2019, the vacuum provide to its tray sealer packaging machines has been exceptionally energy-efficient following the set up of a central vacuum system by Busch Vacuum Solutions.
Gartenfrisch Jung produces its comfort meals in a modern facility in Jagsthausen, a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. To permit it to provide contemporary raw produce all yr round, the company has its own growers in Germany and Portugal. Cultivation in two totally different local weather zones ensures that the complete product vary may be equipped year-round, sold to end users throughout Germany by way of grocery store chains and low cost stores. The ready-to-eat salads are packaged into bowls underneath the company’s personal label, as nicely as for third celebration brands. Gartenfrisch Jung’s historical past dates back to 1795. What began out as a small piece of farmland has now transformed into built-in, managed growers of salads and vegetables and one other arm for processing these products. As a household business, Gartenfrisch Jung has been passed from one generation to the following ever since it began. The experience gained consequently has subsequently grown steadily, resulting in the company’s profitable growth and a high quality normal of its merchandise. Nowadays, Gartenfrisch Jung processes one hundred twenty tonnes of raw meals daily. This is equivalent to dealing with 2,000 pallets, which are then delivered to prospects by eighty refrigerated automobiles.
The ready-to-eat salad dishes (Fig. 1) are packaged on twelve packaging lines with tray sealer packaging machines. In the past, these packaging machines have been outfitted with one rotary vane vacuum pump each, though one machine had two vacuum pumps. These 13 vacuum pumps were used to evacuate the trays to the required vacuum level previous to sealing. A two-shift operation is in place on all twelve packaging lines. The vacuum pumps ran continually all through these shifts, other than during breaks. During a third shift, the production amenities are cleaned while all equipment is stationary.
Jochen Neff, who is in cost of technology at Gartenfrisch Jung, was in search of an alternative vacuum supply, as a outcome of the heat radiated by the 13 vacuum pumps was placing a pressure on the air-con system in the production amenities, which are cooled to between 5 and 6 levels Celsius. Furthermore, the vacuum pumps had an installed motor output of over 50 kilowatts. เกจวัดแรงดัน10bar from Busch Vacuum Solutions analyzed the scenario and beneficial a centralized vacuum provide, which could possibly be set up in a non-air-conditioned room outside the manufacturing amenities.
Because Jung’s convenience products have the best vacuum for packaging at a vacuum level of four hundred millibars, Busch really helpful utilizing MINK claw vacuum pumps. This kind of vacuum pump has the highest efficiency issue out of all mechanical vacuum pumps. This is a result of their contact-free operating precept, which signifies that the moving elements contained in the vacuum pump do not are available contact with each other. In turn, no oil-based lubrication is required and all maintenance work related to the usage of oil as an working fluid is eradicated.
Busch designed a vacuum system with three frequency-controlled MINK claw vacuum pumps (Fig. 2), each of which was geared up with a motor with a nominal motor ranking of 8 kilowatts. However, one of many three vacuum pumps is exclusively on stand-by. Nevertheless, the control system is programmed to ensure that all three vacuum pumps have the same number of working hours.
Centralizing the vacuum provide enabled the total put in motor score to be decreased from 50.2 to 16 kilowatts (Fig. 3) if we assume that two of the vacuum pumps run at 60 Hertz, i.e. maximum energy. This would correspond to a sixty eight p.c reduction in power consumption. However, in follow Jochen Neff has discovered that solely one of the two MINK claw vacuum pumps is generally in use and that this tends to run at a lowered rotational speed. After a quantity of months of use, Jochen Neff has measured average energy consumption of four kilowatt hours for the entire vacuum supply. This is principally linked to the truth that the twelve packaging lines don’t all all the time run at most velocity and never all of the machines are in use on a daily basis. The demand-based management system then decreases the rotational pace to scale back the output, meaning that the system only supplies the performance that’s truly required. In follow, this equates to energy financial savings of over 90 % for vacuum generation.
The new centralized vacuum system was installed in April 2019 and has been in use each since. It is connected to the packaging machines via a community of pipelines. Two upstream vacuum vessels with a volume of 1,500 liters every ensure that the required vacuum level is out there in the packaging chambers as quickly as it is wanted in the packaging cycle. Removing the thirteen original vacuum pumps from the manufacturing areas relieved strain from the air conditioning system. This meant that the air conditioning system might be turned down to keep the room temperature between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius. The financial savings in power costs because of decreasing the air conditioning output have not been measured. However, it could typically be assumed that the change resulted in a major reduction within the vitality consumed by the air-con system.
Thanks to the vacuum system’s redundant design, upkeep may be carried out on the individual MINK claw vacuum pumps throughout production and packaging. MINK claw vacuum pumps are almost maintenance-free. Maintenance is proscribed primarily to the annual preventive change in gear oil. This is performed by a Busch service technician. With the centralized vacuum system, Jochen Neff has created a highly energy-efficient, reliable and economical vacuum supply for packaging his comfort merchandise.
Fig: 1: One of twelve strains used to package deal convenience products on tray sealers
Fig. 2: Vacuum system with three MINK claw vacuum pumps throughout assembly with the 2 vacuum vessels in the background
Fig. three: Comparison of energy consumption for a decentralized and centralized vacuum supply
Image rights: Busch Vacuum Solutions
Busch Vacuum Solutions
Global Marketing – Uli Merkle
10 March 2020
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