Enormous Energy Savings for Packaging Process

Fresh and ready-to-eat salads, vegetable dishes, herbs, and freshly cut fruit form part of Gartenfrisch Jung GmbH’s product portfolio. The long-established firm has advanced into the German market leader for recent convenience products due to its 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 modern facility in Jagsthausen, a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. To permit spmk700 to produce recent raw produce all year round, the company has its own growers in Germany and Portugal. Cultivation in two totally different local weather zones ensures that the entire product vary can be provided year-round, offered to finish customers throughout Germany through supermarket chains and discount shops. The ready-to-eat salads are packaged into bowls underneath the company’s personal label, in addition to for third get together brands. Gartenfrisch Jung’s historical past dates again to 1795. What began out as a small piece of farmland has now remodeled into built-in, controlled growers of salads and greens and one other arm for processing these merchandise. As a household business, Gartenfrisch Jung has been passed from one technology to the following ever because it started. The expertise gained consequently has subsequently grown steadily, leading to the company’s successful development and a excessive quality commonplace of its merchandise. Nowadays, Gartenfrisch Jung processes one hundred twenty tonnes of uncooked food daily. This is equivalent to dealing with 2,000 pallets, which are then delivered to clients 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 were outfitted with one rotary vane vacuum pump each, though one machine had two vacuum pumps. These thirteen 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 continuously all through these shifts, apart from during breaks. During a 3rd shift, the production services are cleaned while all equipment is stationary.
Jochen Neff, who is in management of expertise at Gartenfrisch Jung, was on the lookout for an alternate vacuum provide, as a outcome of the warmth radiated by the 13 vacuum pumps was placing a strain on the air-con system in the manufacturing facilities, that are cooled to between 5 and 6 levels Celsius. Furthermore, the vacuum pumps had an put in motor output of over 50 kilowatts. The vacuum consultants from Busch Vacuum Solutions analyzed the scenario and recommended a centralized vacuum provide, which could possibly be arrange in a non-air-conditioned room outdoors the manufacturing amenities.
Because Jung’s convenience merchandise have the perfect vacuum for packaging at a vacuum stage of four hundred millibars, Busch really helpful using MINK claw vacuum pumps. This sort of vacuum pump has the highest efficiency factor out of all mechanical vacuum pumps. This is a results of their contact-free working principle, which implies that the transferring parts contained in the vacuum pump don’t come in contact with one another. In turn, no oil-based lubrication is required and all upkeep work related to using 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 rating of eight kilowatts. However, one of many three vacuum pumps is completely on stand-by. Nevertheless, the control system is programmed to ensure that all three vacuum pumps have the same number of operating hours.
Centralizing the vacuum provide enabled the whole installed motor ranking 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 sixty eight p.c reduction in power consumption. However, in follow 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 lowered rotational speed. After a number of months of use, Jochen Neff has measured common energy consumption of four kilowatt hours for the complete vacuum provide. This is especially linked to the reality that the twelve packaging lines do not 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 reduce the output, which means that the system only supplies the efficiency that is really required. In practice, this equates to energy savings of over ninety percent for vacuum era.
The new centralized vacuum system was put in in April 2019 and has been in use every since. It is linked to the packaging machines by way of a network of pipelines. Two upstream vacuum vessels with a quantity of 1,500 liters every make sure that the required vacuum stage is out there within the packaging chambers as soon as it is needed within the packaging cycle. Removing the thirteen authentic vacuum pumps from the production areas relieved pressure from the air con system. This meant that the air conditioning system could probably be turned right down to hold the room temperature between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius. The financial savings in vitality prices because of reducing the air-con output have not been measured. However, it may possibly typically be assumed that the change resulted in a big reduction within the power consumed by the air-con system.
Thanks to the vacuum system’s redundant design, upkeep can be carried out on the person MINK claw vacuum pumps during production and packaging. MINK claw vacuum pumps are practically maintenance-free. Maintenance is restricted primarily to the annual preventive change in gear oil. This is carried out by a Busch service technician. With the centralized vacuum system, Jochen Neff has created a highly energy-efficient, reliable and economical vacuum provide for packaging his comfort products.
Fig: 1: One of twelve lines used to package comfort products on tray sealers
Fig. 2: Vacuum system with three MINK claw vacuum pumps throughout assembly with the two vacuum vessels within the background
Fig. three: Comparison of power 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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