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Sehr guter Bericht in "coilworld". Installation einer Trocknungsanlage bei Jupiter Aluminium in den USA, die erste große Anlage in Nordamerika. Die Vorteile der NIR Anlage sind sensationell. http://www.coilworld.com/3-4_07/rlw1.htm In true pioneering spirit, Jupiter Aluminum Corporation, Fairland, IN, installed the first Near InfraRed (NIR) paint-drying oven in a North American coil coating operation and is reaping a harvest of riches. ___ “We’re seeing increased throughput, energy cost savings, elimination of scrap and a reduced equipment footprint. In fact, we went from 132 ft. to just under 30 ft. of oven space. Process speed increased by 50 ft. per minute giving us a 10% increase in energy savings. And those are just a start,” explains Ron Nuckles, Jupiter’s general manager, in ticking off a laundry list of advantages. For example, an NIR oven can increase throughput by 14% to 20%, cut energy costs by $40,000 per month in gas consumption, eliminate scrap from 250 ft. to only 65 ft. and all that within a footprint less than one-fourth the size of a conventional gas oven. And, Jupiter estimates payback time at between 32 and 36 months, for this seven-figure investment. ___ That, in a nutshell, summarizes the switch from a conventional gas oven to the new AdPhos NIR oven.. But there’s more – much more. A Four Year Search ___ About four years ago Nuckles sat in on a presentation by Dr. Kai Baer from AdPhos Steel GmbH at a National Coil Coating Association (NCCA) meeting on the NIR technology. It triggered a series of events that led to a visit to Germany to view a coil line operation involving this technology. Eventually, weighing all factors, Jupiter decided to make its move to the new technology. One factor was that they could use the same paints in the NIR oven as was used with the conventional gas oven. Another factor was the need for a new oven anyway. ___ “We weren’t impetuous,” Nuckles says. “We worked closely with Dura Coat Products, and Valspar, our two prime paint suppliers, Henkel Technologies, our pretreatment supplier, and AdPhos, the supplier of the oven passing many product samples back and forth for testing. Also, we visited the site of two NIR test ovens here in the U.S. to make sure the paint systems would work.” One example of a major advantage; cure time in the NIR oven for high reflectivity, light color paints is three seconds and dark colors well under two seconds as opposed to 17 seconds in a conventional gas oven. Paint metal temperatures (PMTs) are at 420º to 440º F. ___ According to Nuckles, even the manufacturers of Jupiter’s regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO) and waste heat boiler said it must be a typo when we gave them the figure of three seconds –‘…you can’t be at 440º F in three seconds. You must mean three minutes. No, Nuckles said, “it’s three seconds.” So they had to make some modifications to the RTO.. And that accounts for the very short ovens, which helps speed production. ___ “The NIR oven marketed by AdPhos North America, Inc., is designed in four bridges, or four sets of emitters, based on a 400 FPM. run speed, and was tailor made for this facility,” says John Palazzolo, marketing manager for the oven manufacturer. “A great deal of upfront work went into this design before we offered the quotation with guarantees. As with all of our customers, we customize the design to fit their requirements.” The Difference between NIR and IR ___ Regular infra-red on paint is something like an electric heater which heats up everything from the outside in. With paints on a coating line, the heat starts to dry the paints and coatings from the top down and it takes a while to heat up. With NIR technology the energy goes through the paint, reflects off the aluminum and dries from the bottom up. Basically with infra-red you are at roughly three micrometers and up in wave length of light. Jupiter’s NIR oven is at .8 micrometer wavelength approaching the visible light spectrum. With NIR technology the paints absorb the energy at a much greater and faster rate than with infra-red. Infra-red can’t dry as fast because with the top down drying of infra-red the solvent pops out and blisters develop. Because NIR technology dries from bottom up, blisters do not develop. “It’s the next generation of curing,” claims Nuckles. ___ Paul Daugherty, senior technical manager of Dura Coat Products, compares the NIR Infra Red oven vs. conventional gas ovens like a microwave oven to an old element toaster. “That’s the amount of difference between the two,” he says. Palazzolo adds, “…when people hear the ‘infra-red’ in Near InfraRed , they automatically assume you are talking about straight infra-red. But there’s a difference between the two. That is why we prefer to call the technology NIR so people don’t confuse it with infra-red.” ___ Nuckles points to the capability of NIR ovens to near instantaneously ‘ramp up and ramp down,’ where you can adjust the power speeds based on PMT and it won’t affect the paint. That is something you can’t do with conventional ovens. The company is developing sophisticated software to fully utilize the technology. ___ Another benefit is the effective use of energy. The NIR energy is applied 2” to 3” beyond the width of the coil so that on a 24” width coil the power consumption is less since you only apply the energy with 26” to 30” of NIR emitters. With conventional ovens, power is either fully on or fully off, and can’t be varied based on the width of the coil. ___ NIR technology also significantly reduces the amount of scrap. With conventional gas or straight infra-red ovens, without the ability to stop the infra-red heat in a timely manner, when you stop the strip, everything from the coater to the rewind or exit end of the quench is all scrap. With NIR technology and the ability to near instantaneously adjust the amount of NIR energy, you can ramp up and down and even start and stop the line without the need to scrap all the product from the take-up to the quench.Drop-in, Plug-in and Go ___ “The new oven was pretty much a drop-in and plug-in installation” Nuckles boasted. “It probably took us one-quarter of the time it would have taken to install a conventional oven. With NIR technology you plug in the power to the cabinets, hook up the water and air supply and you’re ready to go. The NIR unit controls the zones based on PMT, where conventional gas ovens only control the air temperature. This oven actually measures PMT and adjusts the power accordingly, maintaining the PMT that you dial in. We went from four zone fans of 40 HP each to a single 40HP fan for our NIR oven. ___ “Right now, we’re running at a line speed of 350 FPM, since we are continuing to work on water cooling for quenching. We are putting in heat faster at higher speeds, and therefore may have to expand the quench to obtain the full 400 FPM potential of this oven.” Eliminating Night Strips ___ While Jupiter still works on internal computer systems to control the paint lines, it anticipates that their new software will lead to complete elimination of night strips, a major source of scrap. A night strip typically occupies about five to nine minutes of production line time. “When we eliminate those, it will give us an additional 11% of production time in addition to a 14% speed increase. Plus, we’ll eliminate about 2/3 of head and tail scrap on a color change. You come right out of the oven and the coater to the exit side of the quench, about 65 ft. of scrap. You stop, do your quality checks, pull up the tail of a coil stop, do your color change, hit the splice and go. Before, we had about 250 ft. of scrap which totaled about 300 pounds. That’s a big savings,” Nuckles explains. Still in start-up mode, the new oven has allowed Jupiter to widen its line from 32” to 38.” It is currently painting some 36 3/4” material, but until the software is in place, full potential will not be realized. Solvents coming off the paint are reflected to the RTO where they are destroyed, while part of that air returns back to the process and part goes into the waste heat boiler creating steam to heat the ‘wet’ section, eliminating gas burners for the wash and rinse tanks. The RTO uses virtually no gas unless the line is down for more than 20 minutes at a time. The total package unit will save several thousand dollars per year in energy costs. ___ When a coil goes on line the head of the new coil is stitched into the tail of the material completed. From there it goes into the entry accumulator of the pretreatment, into the coater and then the oven followed by quench. With a drastic reduction in oven space (approximately 85 ft.) an additional steering bridle was added. ___ The extra space provides Jupiter an opportunity for a future double coat system for different products, or to move the exit accumulator and rewind to gain space for slitting equipment. “Space in a manufacturing plant is very expensive, so when you pick up 85 ft. by 50 ft. of floor space, you are looking at very valuable territory,” Nuckles comments.No Pretreatment Changes Jupiter uses a three-stage Henkel pretreatment process, including a Parco® 305R cleaner, followed by two warm water rinses then to a chemcoater where Bonderite® 1455SF non-chrome is applied. “We confirmed this standard process, forwarding cut-out samples to the oven manufacturer to make certain no changes were necessary,” Darrell Logan, Henkel Technologies, commented. Jupiter notes that the paint systems running on the conventional gas oven are now running on the NIR oven as well, without formulation changes. “We discovered a minor problem and are evaluating it,” says Dura Coat’s Daugherty. “It appears some of the darker low gloss colors are knocked down three or four points, altering the color a bit to the light side. We don’t want to make any formulation changes if we can find a dwell or intensity that will work. I’m amazed at how well the standard coatings work in the NIR oven.” ___ Both paint companies are working on minor modifications to either formulations or dwell time at different intensities, so that a grouping of specific paints can run in either a conventional oven or in the NIR oven. Dura Coat does not want to change everything due to the fact in the NIR oven a change in temperature means a change in dwell time. Rather, it looks at minor changes, since the NIR technology is so flexible. ___ According to Nuckles, Jupiter’s two major paint suppliers maintain NIR test ovens. About 90% to 95% of their paint will not have to be changed and the other 5% to 10% may have to be tweaked a bit to be able to be run on both lines. ___ Consistency of the product running through the NIR oven vs. the. conventional gas oven assure that they will achieve 435 PMT rather than the 435, 450 or even 420 PMT you might get with the gas oven. Emitters in the NIR oven give a consistent PMT, enhancing the coating being applied.Stitch Break Time Cut Drastically ___ When a problem occurs in the NIR oven such as a stitch break or other problems, repair normally runs about 15 minutes compared to hours with a conventional gas oven. For example, the new oven cools in seconds compared to a gas oven which would require at least 30 minutes before work could begin. Once you open the emitter trays, you can start work almost immediately. “It is another throughput advantage. We spent years turning things upside down every which way, crunching numbers on throughput, scrap reduction, energy, etc. and in the end it became pretty much a no-brainer in deciding to go with the NIR technology,” Nuckles quips. ___ He goes back over some of the factors in the decision making process, mentioning the savings of $40,000 per month in natural gas, offset somewhat by cost of electricity. But as a manufacturing person he sees the payback in throughput and scrap reduction and consistent repeatability of the process. Factors with conventional gas oven technology, like variations in humidity, temperature, etc. are things of the past. ___ Jupiter has been described as pioneers. Henkel’s Logan reinforces that idea. “When you think how many paint lines are being built without this technology being given a second thought, you see the wisdom and courage of firms like Jupiter. They didn’t offer the conventional excuses such as ‘we don’t want to be first, or ‘we don’t want to fail,’ or ‘we made a mistake”. Adding to that, Nuckles noted that the suppliers of the RTO knew nothing of this technology. ___ “Our owners deserve the credit here,” Nuckles adds. “They recognized that newer technology will keep us competitive for the future and were willing to back the project with necessary funding.” Environmental Impact ___ Nothing much on the environmental front is new with the NIR oven technology. Jupiter Aluminum is currently 99% by permit on air quality. With less chemical and less scrap the company is reclaiming energy costs. And if you include energy and cost to remelt 300+ pounds of scrap per run, plus transportation to the melting site, you’re helping the environment that way, too. Most of Jupiters products go into manufacturing of building products, primarily rainware, soffits, fascia and to a lesser extent awning fans, and storm panels. ___ The company also has three in-house slitters, one pull-through and two looping pit slitters. Capability goes from 1 1/2” width to 72” OD on their newer slitter. The older slitter handles 15” widths to 54” OD and the third slitter is capable of handling 2” wide to 54”OD. All slit materials are custom packed to customer specifications. ___ Is NIR technology the wave of the future in coil coating lines? The answer to that question probably is ‘maybe’ when it comes time to replace conventional gas ovens, but old traditions die hard. The investigative work done by Jupiter Aluminum may make it easier for that decision to be made by others. Certainly, though, the ripples are spreading and the waves on the horizon are building. |
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| Autor (Datum des Eintrages): | lenny007 (21.04.07 14:30:19) |
| Beitrag: | 2 von 47 (ID:28930750) |
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