Krauss Maffei plastics engineering uses Ultrapac 2000 adsorption dryers for their polyurethane reaction machines. As mentioned by the machine-builder an additional benefits of these units which are used for the processing of processing air is the simple handling during assembly and operation as well as the low operating cost.
The individually or in small series customised manufactured reaction machines produce polyurethane foam from polyole, isocyanate and a propellant. This basic material can, by varying the basic components and their additives, be equipped with very different characteristics for numerous fields of application for example in the automotive manufacturing. For the serial production of polyurethane foam components Krauss Maffei also supplies complete production plants.
In order to convey the two high-viscosity reaction components from their containers to the high-pressure pumps and further to the superimposing head, they are subjected to compressed air - mostly with a pressure between 7 and 10 bar. Thomas Hieke, disposition/procurement manager for the reaction technique division at Krauss Maffei: "because compressed air as processing air comes in direct contact with the reaction materials even small oil impurities can lead to quality problems. Above all isocyanate reacts extremely sensitive to humidity. In combination with water it crystallises, even quite small quantities of water could trigger this off."
The critical values for the oil and water content of the processing air are equally strict: beside 1 ppm for oil maximally 0.5 is g/Nm³ water is required. And also here the Donaldson Ultrapac 2000 adsorption dryers come into play. Thomas Hieke: "to keep the water content of the processing air for our reaction machines under the critical value, we use the Ultrapac units as a standard. In total the devices offer many advantages. For example, all components are accommodated in a space saving and ready to mount compact housing: besides the actual drying range this also includes pre and after filters, a condensate drain and the electronic control." The reliability is a further crucial point, because only one short water inleakage into the processing air could lead to crystallised isocyanate which could cause the machine to completely break-down.
According to Thomas Hieke some work and energy saving construction details of the units affect the Krauss Maffei customers favourably. The purchasing manager mentions the drying agent accommodated in easily exchangeable cartridges and the energy saving regeneration at normal operating temperature as another favourable factor.
Also under the aspect of the world-wide sources of supply offered by Krauss Maffei, the adsorptions dryers of Donaldson are the correct choice, because it is rare that the quality of the compressed air supply is on the high level as in Germany. In a plant in China or India clean and above all dry compressed air cannot necessarily be expected. For a customer in such a country it is mostly an absolute must, that the adsorption dryers must be able to fully out-play their reliability and robustness.
Donaldson offers the Ultrapac 2000 adsorption dryer in an extensive series with gradated outputs of 5 to 100 m³/h. Depending on the air requirement, Krauss Maffei uses different sizes of the compact processing units.
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