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 developed into the German market chief for fresh convenience merchandise due 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 foods in a contemporary facility in Jagsthausen, a town within the German state of Baden-Württemberg. To enable it to supply recent uncooked produce all year spherical, the company has its own growers in Germany and Portugal. Cultivation in two totally different climate zones ensures that the entire product range can be provided year-round, offered 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 own label, as properly as for third get together manufacturers. Gartenfrisch Jung’s historical past dates back to 1795. What began out as a small piece of farmland has now remodeled into built-in, managed growers of salads and vegetables and another arm for processing these products. As a household enterprise, Gartenfrisch Jung has been passed from one era to the next ever since it began. The expertise gained as a result has due to this fact grown steadily, leading to the company’s successful improvement and a excessive quality standard of its merchandise. Nowadays, Gartenfrisch Jung processes a hundred and twenty tonnes of uncooked food every day. This is equal to handling 2,000 pallets, which are then delivered to clients by 80 refrigerated vehicles.
The ready-to-eat salad dishes (Fig. 1) are packaged on twelve packaging lines with tray sealer packaging machines. In the previous, these packaging machines have been equipped with one rotary vane vacuum pump every, although one machine had two vacuum pumps. These thirteen vacuum pumps were 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 constantly all through these shifts, other than during breaks. During a 3rd shift, the production amenities are cleaned while all equipment is stationary.
Jochen Neff, who is in control of know-how at Gartenfrisch Jung, was in search of another vacuum provide, as a outcome of the warmth radiated by the 13 vacuum pumps was placing a strain on the air conditioning system in the production facilities, which are cooled to between 5 and 6 degrees 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 beneficial a centralized vacuum supply, which might be arrange in a non-air-conditioned room outside the manufacturing facilities.
Because เครื่องมือวัดความดันคือ have the perfect vacuum for packaging at a vacuum level of 400 millibars, Busch really helpful using MINK claw vacuum pumps. This type of vacuum pump has the highest efficiency factor out of all mechanical vacuum pumps. This is a result of their contact-free working principle, which signifies that the transferring components contained in the vacuum pump don’t come in contact with each other. In flip, no oil-based lubrication is required and all upkeep work related 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 geared up with a motor with a nominal motor rating of 8 kilowatts. However, one of many three vacuum pumps is solely on stand-by. Nevertheless, the control system is programmed to ensure that all three vacuum pumps have the identical variety of operating hours.
Centralizing the vacuum supply enabled the entire 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. maximum energy. This would correspond to a sixty eight % discount in vitality consumption. However, in follow Jochen Neff has found that solely one of the two MINK claw vacuum pumps is often in use and that this tends to run at a lowered rotational pace. After several months of use, Jochen Neff has measured average power consumption of 4 kilowatt hours for the entire vacuum supply. This is especially linked to the reality that the twelve packaging traces do not all always run at maximum velocity and not the entire machines are in use on a daily basis. The demand-based management system then decreases the rotational speed to scale back the output, meaning that the system solely provides the efficiency that is actually required. In practice, this equates to vitality savings of over 90 % for vacuum technology.
The new centralized vacuum system was installed in April 2019 and has been in use every since. It is related to the packaging machines through a community of pipelines. Two upstream vacuum vessels with a quantity of 1,500 liters each ensure that the required vacuum level is on the market within the packaging chambers as quickly as it is needed in the packaging cycle. Removing the 13 original vacuum pumps from the production areas relieved strain from the air-con system. This meant that the air conditioning system could be turned right down to maintain the room temperature between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius. The savings in vitality costs on account of reducing the air con output haven’t been measured. However, it can generally be assumed that the change resulted in a major discount in the vitality consumed by the air con system.
Thanks to the vacuum system’s redundant design, maintenance could be carried out on the person MINK claw vacuum pumps during production and packaging. MINK claw vacuum pumps are nearly maintenance-free. Maintenance is limited 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, dependable and economical vacuum provide for packaging his comfort 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 in the background

Fig. 3: 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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