Fresh and ready-to-eat salads, vegetable dishes, herbs, and freshly reduce fruit form part of Gartenfrisch Jung GmbH’s product portfolio. The long-established firm has advanced into the German market leader for fresh comfort merchandise due to its quality and experience. 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 comfort foods in a modern facility in Jagsthausen, a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. To allow it to supply fresh uncooked produce all 12 months spherical, the corporate has its own growers in Germany and Portugal. Cultivation in two different climate zones ensures that the complete product vary could be equipped year-round, sold to finish customers across Germany through supermarket chains and low cost shops. The ready-to-eat salads are packaged into bowls beneath the company’s personal label, in addition to for third party manufacturers. More to 1795. What began out as a small piece of farmland has now transformed into integrated, controlled growers of salads and greens and another arm for processing these merchandise. As a household business, Gartenfrisch Jung has been passed from one generation to the next ever because it began. The experience gained in consequence has subsequently grown steadily, leading to the company’s successful improvement and a high quality standard of its merchandise. Nowadays, Gartenfrisch Jung processes 120 tonnes of uncooked food every single day. This is equal to dealing with 2,000 pallets, which are then delivered to clients by eighty refrigerated automobiles.
The ready-to-eat salad dishes (Fig. 1) are packaged on twelve packaging lines with tray sealer packaging machines. In the past, these packaging machines were equipped with one rotary vane vacuum pump each, although one machine had two vacuum pumps. These 13 vacuum pumps have been used to evacuate the trays to the required vacuum level prior to sealing. A two-shift operation is in place on all twelve packaging lines. The vacuum pumps ran continuously all through these shifts, aside from throughout breaks. During a 3rd shift, the production amenities are cleaned while all equipment is stationary.
Jochen Neff, who is in control of technology at Gartenfrisch Jung, was in search of an alternate vacuum provide, as a outcome of the heat radiated by the 13 vacuum pumps was putting a strain on the air con system within the manufacturing services, which are cooled to between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, the vacuum pumps had an installed motor output of over 50 kilowatts. The vacuum specialists from Busch Vacuum Solutions analyzed the scenario and recommended a centralized vacuum supply, which could be set up in a non-air-conditioned room outside the production facilities.
Because Jung’s comfort products have the best vacuum for packaging at a vacuum degree of 400 millibars, Busch recommended using MINK claw vacuum pumps. This sort of vacuum pump has the very best 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 out there in contact with each other. In turn, no oil-based lubrication is required and all maintenance work related to using oil as an operating fluid is eliminated.
Busch designed a vacuum system with three frequency-controlled MINK claw vacuum pumps (Fig. 2), every of which was geared up with a motor with a nominal motor rating of eight kilowatts. However, one of the three vacuum pumps is solely on stand-by. Nevertheless, the control system is programmed to guarantee that all three vacuum pumps have the same variety of operating hours.
Centralizing the vacuum provide enabled the whole installed motor rating to be reduced from 50.2 to 16 kilowatts (Fig. 3) if we assume that two of the vacuum pumps run at 60 Hertz, i.e. most energy. This would correspond to a sixty eight percent reduction in energy consumption. However, in follow 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 lowered rotational speed. After several months of use, Jochen Neff has measured average energy consumption of four kilowatt hours for the entire vacuum supply. This is principally linked to the reality that the twelve packaging lines don’t all at all times run at most velocity and not all of the machines are in use all the time. The demand-based management system then decreases the rotational speed to cut back the output, meaning that the system solely provides the performance that’s really required. In follow, this equates to vitality savings of over 90 percent for vacuum generation.
The new centralized vacuum system was put in in April 2019 and has been in use each 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 be sure that the required vacuum level is on the market in the packaging chambers as soon as it is wanted within the packaging cycle. Removing the 13 authentic vacuum pumps from the production areas relieved strain from the air con system. This meant that the air conditioning system could be turned all the way down to hold the room temperature between 5 and 6 levels Celsius. The savings in power costs on account of lowering the air con output have not been measured. However, it may possibly usually be assumed that the change resulted in a major discount within the energy consumed by the air-con system.
Thanks to the vacuum system’s redundant design, maintenance can be carried out on the individual MINK claw vacuum pumps throughout production and packaging. MINK claw vacuum pumps are almost maintenance-free. Maintenance is restricted primarily to the annual preventive change in gear oil. This is performed by a Busch service technician. With the centralized vacuum system, Jochen Neff has created a extremely energy-efficient, reliable and economical vacuum provide for packaging his convenience 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 two vacuum vessels within the background
Fig. 3: 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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