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Flake Ice Machines from GENEGLACE, France |
Perfect pigments
with the help of flake-ice:
Industrial
Refrigeration Pvt. Ltd., (IRPL) represents
GENEGLACE for Flake Ice Machines, Flake Ice
is finding increase usage in the Dyes &
Chemical industry one such manufacturer who
has successfully used Flake Ice is Etn Gebroeders
Cappelle N.V. of Kortrijkstraat, Belgium which
has an excellent reputation for quality pigments
used by the paint, ink, plastics and other
industries.
Their
quality standards have enabled them to continue
to grow as an independent supplier of pigments
alongside the large international chemical
groups. The business has been in family ownership
for four generations.
A
mixture of chemicals in vats produces dyes
and pigments and this process can generate
considerable heat that has to be controlled
- technically this process is defined as an
explosive exothermic effect. At certain critical
times in the process, it is essential that
the rapidly increasing heat is reduced and
specific temperatures are required to sustain
the quality of the end product.
In
the past chilled water had been used but the
industry has long accepted that water is not
suitable and ice has been used for a number
of years. This has raised the question: "What
sort of ice?". Cappelle used to buy in
block ice and break it up and this had two
problems: some of the sharper lumps could
damage the walls of the mixing vats and inconsistent
lump size made accurate prediction of cooling
time impossible.
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Later,
flake- ice machines were installed but Cappelle's
production started to outpace the ice supply. In
Spring 2000, after a review of many options available,
Cappelle took delivery of a Geneglace F900 flake-ice
machine, which produces 25 tones in 24 hours of
sub-cooled ice at -6°C. There are two principal
benefits of Geneglace flake-ice.
First,
compared to chips, blocks or granules of ice, the
flake-ice has a much larger surface area and consequently
provides much more efficient thermal exchange from
the mixture within the vats and this ensures faster
cooling. There is no water mixed with the ice, and
this "ice only" feature of the flake-ice
manufacture means that the latent heat, the principal
source of the cooling energy, is 100 % available
and 1 kg of ice will draw 350kJ of heat from the
mix.
Thus,
the consistency of the dry flake-ice enables precise
calculations to be made of its cooling input by
production directors in the dye and pigment industries
and other processes. The second principal benefit,
endorsed by Cappelle, is the reliability of the
Geneglace F900 flake-ice machine which uses the
"greener" R507 refrigerant. At the Cappelle
plant, which employs 230, there is continuous shift
working six days a week.
At
the critical mixing stage the sizes of vats employed
range from 10 m3 to 40 m 3. It is a convention in
the pigments industry that the many formulae of
chemicals to match specific pigment requirements
are closely guarded trade secrets and at Cappelle
there is no exception to this principle. However,
a typical application for the flake-ice might be
to reduce the temperature of a mix which has reached
24°C (and is still rising) to 5°C.
At
Cappelle the flake-ice is taken from a holding silo
in bins by trolley to the vats and experienced operators
manually introduce the appropriate amount. This
enables the mix to go forward to the next stages
of the process at the optimum temperature and with
the added advantage of less water in the mix, which
reduces time at the later crystallization stage.
Quality control is stringent at Cappelle at every
stage of production. One of the important tests
of batches of the finished products is continuous
exposure to the sun (picture enclosed) over several
weeks. |
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