Cire Technologies Blog

At Cire Technologies we are very cognizant of our customers’ cost of operating our equipment. One area we excel at is reusing waste heat from our equipment back into the process. A current project illustrates an innovative use of waste heat that will pay for itself in less than one year and provide benefits to the bottom line of the customer for years to come.

Our customer has two solvent based pressure sensitive adhesive coating lines that currently exhaust to a recuperative thermal oxidizer that needs to be replaced. It was the customer’s desire to replace the single oxidizer with two oxidizers, one for each coating line, to provide operating flexibility and redundancy. The system design allows the oxidizers to be used interchangeably to add to the system flexibility.

This project encompassed the design, fabrication, installation and start-up of a new process line for a web oxidizing process line. This turnkey installation included the web handling equipment, 3-pass and six temperature zone oven and an interactive computer control system. The process required gentle handling of a brittle product and the demanding service of oven operating temperatures up to 752°F (400°C).

The oven was designed with three, ten-meter passes of floatation ovens. Each pass has two temperature and velocity zones and is heated with electric coils. A high-temperature heat exchanger reduces power requirements by over 60% by capturing the waste heat from the oven exhaust to pre-heat the make-up air supplied to each zone. Careful design and consideration of temperature (on the fly) splice heating station, accumulator, web guides and web rewind. The computer interface control system allows for precise control of the entire line and recipe development.
The project was completed on time and on budget, while exceeding stringent performance specifications. Variable speed drives on all fan motors and precise control of each of the six zones result in a flexible process line, which will allow for process changes as well as accommodating new future products.

For over 20 years, Cire Technologies has provided high quality solutions for the converting industry. The close personal coordination of our senior personnel with our customer insures highly effective solutions in the drying and oxidizer fields. Our services can include any and all phases of a project from conceptual design to final design and fabrication through to the installation and start-up. We look forward to applying our experience to solve your unique challenges.

This project encompassed the design, fabrication, installation and start-up of a new process line for a web coating and curing process line in a clean room environment. This turnkey installation included the web handling equipment, a 4-zone tower flotation oven and an interactive computer control system. The process required gentle handling of a light film product and the demanding service of oven operating temperatures up to 842°F (450°C).

The oven was designed with a hybrid heating system using indirect propane heated make-up air and electrical coil supplemental heat in the final three zones of the oven. The indirect heat is powered by a nozzle burner firing into a recirculating loop, through a plate type heat exchanger. The efficiency of the indirect system exceeds 95% . The make-up air is HEPA filtered and fed to the four oven zones. High temperature filters are provided in the recirculating loop of the first three zones. A cooling zone at the top of the tower cools the web with HEPA filtered outside air prior to it passing over the turn roll. A nozzle retraction system allows the nozzles to be set anywhere from 0.375" to 3.5" apart.