ENERGY MANAGEMENT | PRODUCTION
it prescribes to lean manufactur- ing. Technical Processing Manager Dean Elliott, Technical Customer Service Matt Rams- dell and Marketing and Business Development Manager Tammy Straw, have identified three key areas of energy wastage in compounding. The first of these is equipment
energy loss. ENTEK advises the importance of specifying the overall system correctly for the intended application. For example, if the extruder or downstream equipment is oversized or undersized, there is a potential for energy inefficiency (waste). Water cooled motors operate more efficiently than air cooled motors – they already utilise an internal cooling system whereas an air-cooled motor relies on an external blower for cooling. Running motors on VFDs (variable frequency drive) also increases efficiency, as does not running on full speed when not necessary. Finally, the company says an efficient barrel cooling system operates through heat of vaporisation of water and the barrels are
Left: Compounding equipment must be correctly specified to operate at its most efficient, says ENTEK
internally cooled. Blankets and shroud over blankets help to retain heat in the barrel. Processing energy loss is a second consid-
eration, according to ENTEK. Most of the energy generated is frictional heat that is provided by the motor of the extruder. This can be minimised through appropriate screw design. The layout should not be overdesigned – the screw configura- tion should not be too aggressive. For example, if achieving a good quality product requires a specific energy input (SEI) of 0.1 (
kW.hr)/kg, a screw design that uses 0.13 (
kW.hr)/kg is over- designed by 30% and is wasting energy. Similarly, operating the extruder with the screw speed too high can increase the SEI unnecessarily.
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IMAGE: ENTEK
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