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Airknife steel strip drying system saves costs
An
Air Control Industries product story
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk editorial team
Apr 1, 2008
A blower powered airknife drying system saved costs and achieved a rapid payback in removing coolant and lubricant from the surface of steel strip.
A new blower-powered Airknife moisture removal system installed on the five-stand mill at the Corus Trostre Works, Llanelli, UK, saves money and helps to ensure quality.
Before the installation of the blower-powered airknives, compressed air delivered through 66 nozzles was used to remove surface moisture (lubricant and coolant) from steel strip as it exited the mill.
Air Control Industries told manufacturingtalk that this was an expensive process and one of variable performance, owing to some inherent characteristics of compressed air that impacted upon quality.
The 66 nozzles delivered a total of 1748 ft3/min of air at 5 bar.
It equated to more than 7HP/5kW per nozzle - making a total in excess of 345kW with an annual running cost for a 48 weeks/year of approximately GBP 75,000.
In comparison, the Airknife system, supplied by Air Control Industries (ACI) of Chard, UK, uses just 60kW yet achieves more efficient moisture removal.
The result, payback was achieved in just 21 weeks.
In addition, whilst the compressed air supply was vulnerable to demands for other operations within the plant, resulting in inconsistent performance which impacted upon quality, the blower-powered Airknives deliver the required air output - constantly.
Air delivered by the Airknives also has the benefit of being heated by the blowers, as a result of air compression, making it a more effective drying agent.
The original compressed air moisture removal system was also vulnerable to contamination by oil and moisture.
This had the potential to cause imperfections in the tinplate.
With the new Airknife system air is filtered at the inlets of both the enclosure and blower so such problems are eliminated.
ACI's Airknife moisture removal system comprises a pair of stainless steel chevron-shaped aiknives covering a width of 1240mm fed at all times by four of the company's 15kW EP10 blowers, which are housed in pairs in acoustic enclosures.
There are in fact six blowers but two are on standby.
Air from the blowers is delivered to the Airknives, first via 200mm ducting and then by two 150mm ducts.
The blowers are powered by inverter-controlled, high-efficiency EFF1 motors.
This permits the blowers to be ramped up and down as required whereas the compressed air system was either on/off and could be left on between production runs.
"Low-volume and applications which require low to medium-pressure are an inefficient use of compressed air," said Paul Millett, senior development engineer.
"Whereas air delivered in high-volume at low pressure, as supplied by the ACI blower-powered Airknives, is ideal.
In less than six months we have recouped our investment and quality has also improved through the reduction of imperfections caused by contamination during the moisture removal process".
The metal strip passing through the tinplating mill varies in width from 610mm to 1236mm and travels at speed up to 1524m/min.
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