pressure gauge 10 bar and ready-to-eat salads, vegetable dishes, herbs, and freshly minimize fruit form a part of Gartenfrisch Jung GmbH’s product portfolio. The long-established firm has advanced into the German market leader for fresh convenience products because of 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 city within the German state of Baden-Württemberg. To enable it to provide contemporary raw produce all year spherical, the company has its personal growers in Germany and Portugal. Cultivation in two totally different local weather zones ensures that the whole product range can be provided year-round, offered to end customers across Germany through grocery store chains and discount stores. 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 history dates again to 1795. What started out as a small piece of farmland has now transformed into integrated, controlled growers of salads and vegetables and one other arm for processing these products. As a household enterprise, Gartenfrisch Jung has been passed from one technology to the following ever because it started. The expertise gained consequently has therefore grown steadily, leading to the company’s successful improvement and a high quality standard of its merchandise. Nowadays, Gartenfrisch Jung processes one hundred twenty tonnes of uncooked meals every day. This is equivalent to handling 2,000 pallets, that are then delivered to prospects by eighty refrigerated autos.
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 geared up 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 traces. The vacuum pumps ran constantly all through these shifts, aside from throughout breaks. During a 3rd shift, the manufacturing facilities are cleaned whereas all machinery is stationary.
Jochen Neff, who’s in management of technology at Gartenfrisch Jung, was on the lookout for an alternate vacuum provide, because the heat radiated by the thirteen vacuum pumps was putting a pressure on the air conditioning system in the production amenities, that are cooled to between 5 and 6 levels 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 recommended a centralized vacuum supply, which could possibly be arrange in a non-air-conditioned room outside the manufacturing facilities.
Because Jung’s comfort products have the perfect vacuum for packaging at a vacuum degree of four hundred millibars, Busch really helpful using MINK claw vacuum pumps. This kind of vacuum pump has the highest effectivity factor out of all mechanical vacuum pumps. This is a result of their contact-free working precept, which signifies that the transferring components inside the vacuum pump do not are available in contact with one another. In flip, no oil-based lubrication is required and all upkeep work related to the usage of oil as an operating fluid is eradicated.
Busch designed a vacuum system with three frequency-controlled MINK claw vacuum pumps (Fig. 2), every of which was equipped with a motor with a nominal motor score of eight kilowatts. However, one of the three vacuum pumps is completely 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 whole installed motor score to be decreased from 50.2 to 16 kilowatts (Fig. 3) if we assume that two of the vacuum pumps run at 60 Hertz, i.e. maximum power. This would correspond to a sixty eight percent discount in energy consumption. However, in practice 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 decreased rotational speed. After a quantity of months of use, Jochen Neff has measured common power consumption of four kilowatt hours for the whole vacuum provide. This is mainly linked to the truth that the twelve packaging traces do not all at all times run at maximum velocity and never all the machines are in use on an everyday basis. The demand-based management system then decreases the rotational speed to scale back the output, meaning that the system only supplies the efficiency that is actually required. In follow, this equates to energy savings of over 90 p.c for vacuum technology.
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 via a network of pipelines. Two upstream vacuum vessels with a quantity of 1,500 liters each ensure that the required vacuum stage is out there in the packaging chambers as quickly as it is wanted in the packaging cycle. Removing the 13 original vacuum pumps from the production areas relieved strain from the air conditioning system. This meant that the air-con system could be turned right down to maintain the room temperature between 5 and 6 levels Celsius. The savings in vitality prices on account of reducing the air con output haven’t been measured. However, it can typically be assumed that the change resulted in a big reduction within the power consumed by the air conditioning system.
Thanks to the vacuum system’s redundant design, maintenance may be carried out on the individual MINK claw vacuum pumps during manufacturing 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 comfort products.
Fig: 1: One of twelve traces used to package deal comfort products on tray sealers
Fig. 2: Vacuum system with three MINK claw vacuum pumps during assembly with the 2 vacuum vessels within the background
Fig. three: Comparison of vitality 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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