A new video shows how melt filtration and pelletizing technologies from Nordson Corporation conserve energy and enhance productivity at the 600 ton per day PET resin plant of Lotte Chemical UK Ltd., Nordson announced today.
Commissioned late in 2014, the world-scale plant at Lotte Chemical’s Redcar, England facility includes three pelletizing / crystallizing units based on Nordson’s patented BKG® CrystallCut™ process, which saves energy by retaining heat from the molten polymer and using it for crystallization. The installation also includes a Nordson Kreyenborg™ POLY screen changer, whose quick-change operation makes possible filter screen replacement while maintaining continuous production.
Conventionally, PET pellets are cooled after pelletizing, then reheated for crystallization. The video shows how the CrystallCut process eliminates cooling by rapidly transporting pellets from the cutter face of the die through hot water and directly into a centrifugal dryer. The pellets exit the dryer at a temperature of 140 to 150 °C. and are uniformly crystallized.
“For a modern, world-scale PET plant operating ‘24/7,’ we estimate that the CrystallCut system can save millions of Euros per year in energy costs by combining pelletizing and crystallizing into a single integrated process without a cooling step,” said Ralf Simon, Nordson BKG managing director. “And because the retained heat causes pellets to crystallize from the inside out, the result is an improved crystalline structure that requires less energy for re-melting.”
The new video also includes an animation showing how screen packs are replaced in the patented Kreyenborg POLY melt filtration system. There are four pairs of screen packs mounted on two movable pistons, with two pairs side-by-side on each piston. As one pair is disengaged from the process for screen replacement, melt filtration continues in the other three.
“The operator-friendly POLY screen changer makes it possible to replace screen packs without any system shutdown,” said Sven Conrad, melt filtration business director. “The system has a high capacity designed to provide efficient filtration in large-volume polymerization operations.”
The video can be accessed at this link: http://www.nordson.com/en/divisions/polymer-processing-systems/products/pelletizers/crystallcut
