Drying of PET is more and more integral part of the process of transformation, to the point of becoming a necessary and crucial step.
New applications of PET’s, environmentally sustainable PET’s, modified PET’s for extrusion blow moulding processes and increased PET supply capacities, require accurate and dependable drying performance. PET is a highly hygroscopic resin, very susceptible to environmental conditions and storage means that, if not properly dried and adequately conditioned, will experience a rapid drop-off in IV, which can be detrimental to the blow moulding process of PET containers.
A typical resin drying process consumes a large quanity of energy, requiring the resin to be exposed to hot, dry air for up to as much as six hours. Given the high cost of energy today, a tremendous effort is focused on improving this process to be more energy efficient.
Genesys of Piovan is the innovative new resin drying system designed to deliver the lowest energy consumption ever. Through the implementation of state-of-the-art technology, such as loss in weight control, airflow management and stabilisation, an intelligent regeneration process and advanced industrial PC-based control, Genesys is the next generation of PET resin drying, the only auto-adaptive system available today.
A total of 450 Genesys systems have been installed so far, for an overall energy saving of two million kilowatt hours per year and a respective reduction of CO2 emissions in 100,000t / year.
Air flow management and stabilisation is key to controlling energy consumption. Piovan has integrated an automatic air flow control and adjustment to reduce energy consumption by 35% – 55% below today’s conventional resin drying systems. Another exclusive and innovative feature of Genesys is the capability to stabilise the airflow in the drying hopper, for a further drastic optimisation of the energy utilisation.
Because regeneration of the desiccant material consumes tremendous amounts of energy, Genesys recovers almost the entire energy utilised in this step of the drying process. By doing this, Genesys is able to provide savings between 50 – 80% when compared to traditional or current regeneration technology.
Genesys can provide the lowest energy consumption, when compared to any other drying technology available today, guaranteeing overall savings of 30% and up! For a system producing PET performs running resin at a rate of 1,000kg/h, this represents a savings of at least 220,000kW/h per year.
With the objective of providing customers with additional guarantee as to the energy savings that can be achieved with Genesys drying systems, Piovan appointed TÜV*, the independent certification body, to test a system installed at the premises of a European beverage manufacturer.
The energy utilisation measured was 69.2W/kg/h, as verified by TÜV (Test report no. 204325), after seven months of operation of the system in question.
This is the lowest value ever measured to date, showing how energy costs can be reduced by 50% with respect to traditional PET drying systems.
The type of material processed is a PET resin with high-intrinsic viscosity (IV 0.8 dl/g), which is commonly used for the production of beverage bottles.
In May 2013 Piovan was also awarded the acceptance of a very prestigious patent: EP2186613B1 high-efficiency system for drying plastic materials
Piovan have focussed their resources more and more on developing a range of products that offers a significant and financially quantifiable level of energy savings. This important result constitutes concrete and transparent proof of the flair for innovation of a company that has a better understanding of PET processing than anyone else.
*TÜV Italia is an independent certification and inspection body that has been operating in Italy since 1987 and belongs to the TÜV SÜD group founded in 1866.