Enormous Energy Savings for Packaging Process

Fresh and ready-to-eat salads, vegetable dishes, herbs, and freshly minimize fruit form part of Gartenfrisch Jung GmbH’s product portfolio. The long-established firm has advanced into the German market chief for fresh comfort products because of its high quality and expertise. Since early 2019, the vacuum supply 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 comfort foods in a contemporary facility in Jagsthausen, a city within the German state of Baden-Württemberg. To permit it to provide contemporary raw produce all 12 months spherical, the corporate has its personal growers in Germany and Portugal. เกจวัดแรงดันแก๊สอาร์กอน in two completely different climate zones ensures that the complete product vary could be supplied year-round, sold to finish users across Germany via supermarket chains and discount stores. The ready-to-eat salads are packaged into bowls beneath the company’s own label, in addition to for third party brands. Gartenfrisch Jung’s history dates back to 1795. What began out as a small piece of farmland has now transformed into built-in, managed growers of salads and greens and another arm for processing these merchandise. As a family enterprise, Gartenfrisch Jung has been passed from one era to the next ever since it started. The expertise gained in consequence has due to this fact grown steadily, resulting in the company’s successful development and a high quality commonplace of its products. Nowadays, Gartenfrisch Jung processes a hundred and twenty tonnes of raw meals daily. This is equal to dealing with 2,000 pallets, which are then delivered to prospects by 80 refrigerated autos.
The ready-to-eat salad dishes (Fig. 1) are packaged on twelve packaging strains with tray sealer packaging machines. In the past, these packaging machines had been equipped with one rotary vane vacuum pump each, though one machine had two vacuum pumps. These thirteen vacuum pumps had been used to evacuate the trays to the required vacuum degree previous to sealing. A two-shift operation is in place on all twelve packaging lines. The vacuum pumps ran continuously throughout these shifts, apart from throughout breaks. During a 3rd shift, the production services are cleaned while all equipment is stationary.
Jochen Neff, who’s in charge of expertise at Gartenfrisch Jung, was on the lookout for an alternate vacuum provide, as a result of the warmth radiated by the 13 vacuum pumps was placing a strain on the air-con system in the production amenities, which are cooled to between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, the vacuum pumps had an put in motor output of over 50 kilowatts. The vacuum consultants from Busch Vacuum Solutions analyzed the state of affairs and recommended a centralized vacuum provide, which could be set up in a non-air-conditioned room exterior the production facilities.
Because Jung’s comfort merchandise have the best vacuum for packaging at a vacuum stage of 400 millibars, Busch really helpful using MINK claw vacuum pumps. This sort of vacuum pump has the best efficiency issue out of all mechanical vacuum pumps. This is a results of their contact-free working precept, which means that the transferring elements contained in the vacuum pump don’t are out there in contact with one another. In flip, no oil-based lubrication is required and all upkeep work related to using oil as an operating fluid is eradicated.
Busch designed a vacuum system with three frequency-controlled MINK claw vacuum pumps (Fig. 2), every of which was equipped with a motor with a nominal motor ranking of eight kilowatts. However, one of many three vacuum pumps is solely on stand-by. Nevertheless, the control system is programmed to guarantee that all three vacuum pumps have the same variety of operating hours.
Centralizing the vacuum supply enabled the whole installed motor rating to be reduced from 50.2 to 16 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 68 % reduction in energy consumption. However, in practice Jochen Neff has discovered that solely one of many two MINK claw vacuum pumps is generally in use and that this tends to run at a reduced rotational pace. After a number of months of use, Jochen Neff has measured common power consumption of four kilowatt hours for the entire vacuum provide. This is mainly linked to the truth that the twelve packaging strains do not all at all times 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 cut back the output, which means that the system only provides the efficiency that’s really required. In practice, this equates to energy financial savings of over 90 p.c for vacuum technology.
The new centralized vacuum system was put in in April 2019 and has been in use every since. It is related to the packaging machines by way of a network of pipelines. Two upstream vacuum vessels with a volume of 1,500 liters every make certain that the required vacuum stage is out there within the packaging chambers as soon as it’s needed in the packaging cycle. Removing the thirteen original vacuum pumps from the production areas relieved strain from the air-con system. This meant that the air-con system might be turned all the way down to hold the room temperature between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius. The financial savings in power prices on account of lowering the air-con output have not been measured. However, it could generally be assumed that the change resulted in a big reduction within the energy consumed by the air conditioning system.
Thanks to the vacuum system’s redundant design, maintenance could be carried out on the individual MINK claw vacuum pumps during manufacturing and packaging. MINK claw vacuum pumps are almost maintenance-free. Maintenance is restricted mainly 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 extremely energy-efficient, dependable and economical vacuum supply for packaging his convenience merchandise.
Fig: 1: One of twelve strains used to bundle convenience products on tray sealers
Fig. 2: Vacuum system with three MINK claw vacuum pumps throughout meeting with the two vacuum vessels within the background
Fig. 3: 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
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