Enormous Energy Savings for Packaging Process

Fresh and ready-to-eat salads, vegetable dishes, herbs, and freshly reduce fruit kind a half of Gartenfrisch Jung GmbH’s product portfolio. The long-established company has evolved into the German market leader for contemporary comfort merchandise thanks to its high quality and expertise. Since early 2019, the vacuum supply 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 convenience meals in a contemporary facility in Jagsthausen, a town within the German state of Baden-Württemberg. To enable it to supply contemporary uncooked produce all 12 months spherical, the company has its own growers in Germany and Portugal. Cultivation in two different climate zones ensures that the complete product vary can be equipped year-round, bought to end users across Germany by way of grocery store chains and low cost shops. The ready-to-eat salads are packaged into bowls under the company’s personal label, in addition to for third get together manufacturers. Gartenfrisch Jung’s historical past dates back to 1795. What began out as เกจวัดแรงดันpcp of farmland has now remodeled into integrated, controlled growers of salads and greens and one other arm for processing these products. As a household enterprise, Gartenfrisch Jung has been passed from one generation to the subsequent ever because it started. The experience gained consequently has therefore grown steadily, leading to the company’s successful development and a high quality standard of its products. Nowadays, Gartenfrisch Jung processes a hundred and twenty tonnes of raw meals daily. This is equivalent to dealing with 2,000 pallets, which are then delivered to prospects by 80 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 geared up with one rotary vane vacuum pump every, although one machine had two vacuum pumps. These 13 vacuum pumps have been used to evacuate the trays to the required vacuum stage prior to sealing. A two-shift operation is in place on all twelve packaging strains. The vacuum pumps ran continually all through these shifts, other than during breaks. During a 3rd shift, the manufacturing services are cleaned whereas all machinery is stationary.
Jochen Neff, who’s in control of expertise at Gartenfrisch Jung, was looking for an alternate vacuum supply, as a result of the warmth radiated by the thirteen vacuum pumps was placing a pressure on the air con system within the manufacturing services, that are cooled to between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, the vacuum pumps had an installed motor output of over 50 kilowatts. The vacuum specialists from Busch Vacuum Solutions analyzed the situation and recommended a centralized vacuum provide, which might be set up in a non-air-conditioned room outdoors the production amenities.
Because Jung’s convenience products have the ideal vacuum for packaging at a vacuum degree of four hundred millibars, Busch recommended utilizing MINK claw vacuum pumps. This sort of vacuum pump has the very best efficiency factor out of all mechanical vacuum pumps. This is a results of their contact-free working principle, which implies that the shifting elements inside the vacuum pump do not 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 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 score of eight kilowatts. However, one of the three vacuum pumps is exclusively on stand-by. Nevertheless, the management system is programmed to ensure that all three vacuum pumps have the identical number of working hours.
Centralizing the vacuum provide enabled the total installed motor rating 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. maximum energy. This would correspond to a sixty eight % reduction in vitality consumption. However, in apply Jochen Neff has found that only one of many two MINK claw vacuum pumps is generally in use and that this tends to run at a reduced rotational velocity. After a quantity of months of use, Jochen Neff has measured average power consumption of 4 kilowatt hours for the entire vacuum provide. This is especially linked to the fact that the twelve packaging lines do not all at all times run at maximum velocity and never all of the machines are in use on a regular basis. The demand-based control system then decreases the rotational velocity to cut back the output, which means that the system solely provides the performance that’s really required. In practice, this equates to energy financial savings of over ninety percent for vacuum generation.
The new centralized vacuum system was installed in April 2019 and has been in use every since. It is related to the packaging machines via a network of pipelines. Two upstream vacuum vessels with a volume of 1,500 liters each be certain that the required vacuum stage is available in the packaging chambers as quickly as it’s wanted in the packaging cycle. Removing the thirteen authentic vacuum pumps from the manufacturing areas relieved strain from the air-con system. This meant that the air con system could be turned all the method down to maintain the room temperature between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius. The financial savings in power costs because of decreasing the air-con output have not been measured. However, it might possibly typically be assumed that the change resulted in a big reduction in the vitality consumed by the air-con system.
Thanks to the vacuum system’s redundant design, maintenance can be carried out on the individual MINK claw vacuum pumps during 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 carried out by a Busch service technician. With the centralized vacuum system, Jochen Neff has created a extremely energy-efficient, reliable and economical vacuum supply for packaging his convenience merchandise.
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 in the background

Fig. three: Comparison of energy consumption for a decentralized and centralized vacuum provide

Image rights: Busch Vacuum Solutions

Busch Vacuum Solutions

Global Marketing – Uli Merkle

10 March 2020

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