Enormous Energy Savings for Packaging Process

Fresh and ready-to-eat salads, vegetable dishes, herbs, and freshly reduce fruit form a half of Gartenfrisch Jung GmbH’s product portfolio. The long-established company has developed into the German market chief for fresh comfort merchandise due to its high quality and expertise. Since early 2019, the vacuum provide to its tray sealer packaging machines has been exceptionally energy-efficient following the installation of a central vacuum system by Busch Vacuum Solutions.
Gartenfrisch Jung produces its convenience foods in a contemporary facility in Jagsthausen, a town within the German state of Baden-Württemberg. To allow it to produce fresh raw produce all 12 months spherical, the company has its personal growers in Germany and Portugal. Cultivation in two totally different climate zones ensures that the complete product vary could be equipped year-round, bought to finish users throughout Germany via grocery store chains and discount stores. The ready-to-eat salads are packaged into bowls underneath the company’s own label, as nicely as for third get together brands. Gartenfrisch Jung’s history dates again to 1795. What began out as a small piece of farmland has now transformed into integrated, controlled growers of salads and vegetables and another arm for processing these products. As a family business, Gartenfrisch Jung has been handed from one era to the following ever since it began. The experience gained as a result has subsequently grown steadily, resulting in the company’s successful growth and a high quality normal of its merchandise. Nowadays, Gartenfrisch Jung processes one hundred twenty tonnes of uncooked meals daily. This is equal to handling 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 strains with tray sealer packaging machines. In the previous, these packaging machines had been outfitted with one rotary vane vacuum pump every, although one machine had two vacuum pumps. These thirteen vacuum pumps had been used to evacuate the trays to the required vacuum level previous to sealing. A two-shift operation is in place on all twelve packaging traces. The vacuum pumps ran continually all through these shifts, other than throughout breaks. During a third shift, the manufacturing amenities are cleaned whereas all machinery is stationary.
Jochen Neff, who is in command of technology at Gartenfrisch Jung, was on the lookout for an alternate vacuum supply, because the heat radiated by the thirteen vacuum pumps was putting a strain on the air conditioning system within the production facilities, that are cooled to between 5 and 6 levels Celsius. Furthermore, the vacuum pumps had an installed motor output of over 50 kilowatts. The vacuum experts from Busch Vacuum Solutions analyzed the situation and recommended a centralized vacuum supply, which could probably be set up in a non-air-conditioned room outside the production amenities.
Because Jung’s convenience merchandise have the best vacuum for packaging at a vacuum stage of 400 millibars, Busch recommended using MINK claw vacuum pumps. This type of vacuum pump has the best effectivity issue out of all mechanical vacuum pumps. This is a result of their contact-free operating precept, which means that the transferring components inside the vacuum pump don’t are available in contact with one another. In turn, no oil-based lubrication is required and all maintenance work associated to using oil as an working fluid is eliminated.
Busch designed a vacuum system with three frequency-controlled MINK claw vacuum pumps (Fig. 2), every of which was outfitted with a motor with a nominal motor ranking of 8 kilowatts. However, one of many three vacuum pumps is solely on stand-by. Nevertheless, the management system is programmed to make certain that all three vacuum pumps have the same number of working hours.
Centralizing the vacuum provide enabled the whole installed motor score to be reduced from 50.2 to sixteen kilowatts (Fig. 3) if we assume that two of the vacuum pumps run at 60 Hertz, i.e. most energy. This would correspond to a sixty eight p.c reduction in vitality consumption. However, in practice Jochen Neff has found that only one of many two MINK claw vacuum pumps is normally in use and that this tends to run at a reduced rotational speed. After several months of use, Jochen Neff has measured common energy consumption of 4 kilowatt hours for the entire vacuum provide. This is especially linked to the reality that the twelve packaging strains do not all always run at maximum pace and not all the machines are in use on a regular basis. The demand-based control system then decreases the rotational speed to minimize back the output, which means that the system only provides the efficiency that’s actually required. In follow, this equates to power savings of over 90 percent for vacuum generation.
The new centralized vacuum system was put in in April 2019 and has been in use each since. It is linked to the packaging machines through a network of pipelines. Two upstream vacuum vessels with a volume of 1,500 liters each make sure that the required vacuum degree is out there in the packaging chambers as quickly as it’s wanted within the packaging cycle. Removing the 13 authentic vacuum pumps from the production areas relieved pressure from the air-con system. This meant that the air-con system could be turned all the way down to hold the room temperature between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius. The financial savings in power costs because of reducing the air con output haven’t been measured. However, it could usually be assumed that the change resulted in a major discount in the power consumed by the air-con system.
Thanks to the vacuum system’s redundant design, upkeep can be carried out on the individual MINK claw vacuum pumps during production and packaging. MINK claw vacuum pumps are nearly maintenance-free. Maintenance is proscribed primarily to the annual preventive change in gear oil. This is performed by a Busch service technician. With pressure gauge ราคา centralized vacuum system, Jochen Neff has created a extremely energy-efficient, reliable and economical vacuum provide for packaging his convenience products.
Fig: 1: One of twelve traces used to package deal comfort merchandise 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 vitality consumption for a decentralized and centralized vacuum supply
Image rights: Busch Vacuum Solutions
Busch Vacuum Solutions
Global Marketing – Uli Merkle
10 March 2020
Share

Leave a Comment