ENERGY SAVING IN FOOD PACKAGING

Increasing energy and raw material costs, along with a growing sensitivity toward environmental issues, have led printing companies to seek new ways to obtain energy savings in order to reduce management costs and stay competitive on the international markets.

During the exsiccation process of the inks on the printed material, a lot of energy is required to heat up the air inside the ventilation system of each printing machine. Through an automatic air recirculation control system, it is possible to recycle most of this hot air and send it back as a inlet fresh air in the ventilation system of the printing machine.

This automatic air recirculation system drastically reduces the energy costs associated with the air heating system (Heat exchangers).

The automatic air recirculation system offers key benefits like energy saving, air volume reduction resulting is saving in investment required to solvent recovery, and increased safety inside the press room.

LEL MONITORING SYSTEM:

The flammable properties of the solvents and the high temperatures inside the ventilation system of any Laminating, Flexo or Rotogravure printing machine, can create dangerous risk of explosions. In order to avoid these dangerous conditions, the solvent concentration inside the ventilation system must be checked by a LEL Monitoring System and must be kept below then the 50% of its Lower Explosion Level (UNI EN 1539). A LEL Monitoring System is an analytical system able to check and control the solvent concentration inside the drying stations during any printing or laminating process.

AUTOMATIC AIR RECIRCOLATION CONTROL SYSTEM:

Actually, on the printing or laminating machines, there are two different types of ventilation systems: ventilation system without air recirculation system, usually present on old printing or laminating machines and ventilation system with manual or automatic air recirculation system, generally already present on new printing or laminating machines:

THIS ENERGY SAVING ESTIMATION IS BASED ON A SINGLE PRINTING ELEMENT:

Air recirculation percentages                           0%            50%             90%

Inlet air flow                                  m³/h          5.000         5.000            5.000

Inlet air temperature                      °C              20              20                 20

Drying temperature                       °C              70              70                 70

Heat exchanger DT                        °C             50              32                 17

Energy required to heat up    

ENERGY SAVING                                          0%            30%             60%

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to establish the total investment on this automatic air recirculation system, because all the printing or laminating machines on the market have different configurations and characteristics.

In some machines, which is already present a manual air recirculation systems, it will be possible to obtain the automatic air recirculation system, just by adding a LEL monitoring system and some pneumatic actuators, but unfortunately, in some older printing machines, some adjustments on the ventilation system will be absolutely needed.

In order to establish the total project investment, a technical inspection by our specialized technicians will be absolutely required. After this technical inspection, we will be able to estimate the total project investment, the energy saving and also the payback time based on the yearly energy saving. 

Through our LEL monitoring system and through our automatic air recirculation control system, the printing companies can save a lot of money wasted on the air heating system and they can also obtain many others benefits and advantages: 

-       More safety inside the work shop, because monitoring and keeping under control the  solvent concentration inside the ventilation system, avoids dangerous risk of explosions.

-      Lower investments on air treading systems, because these investments are partially related to the quantity of air to be treated, through our systems,  we reduce the volume of the air in discharge (from 40 to 60%) and we also reduce the expensive investments on the air treading systems (number and dimension of the “absorbers” with active carbon).

NIRA SUPPLIES THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES:

- Free consultation

- Plant inspection

- Studies of the ventilation system

- Detailed quotation

- Energy saving estimation

- Construction drawings for mechanical adjustments of the ventilation system

- LEL monitoring systems and installation and automatic air recirculation control systems and 

  installations

- Contract maintenance