Effective and cost-saving drying of water-cooled insulated cables
08 September 2011
“Since the installation of ACI’s LINE-Dry System product quality has definitely improved”, stated Paul Randall, Production Director of Concept Cables. “Achieving a consistent and acceptable drying standard has always been difficult and costly when using compressed air, but with ACI’s blower-driven drying unit, we have overcome our drying difficulties and saved money as well.”
Air Control Industries
As an independent wire and cable manufacturer, Concept Cables Ltd is committed to providing solutions for a whole spectrum of industries across the UK. In addition to its standard range of wires and multicores, the company offers the ability of manufacturing products designed to meet customers’ specific requirements.
Concept Cables is dedicated to continuous quality improvements in all areas. This includes on-going investment in the latest manufacturing and test equipment to ensure the company can meet the high quality and service demanded by its customers.
One of the main problems the company has recently overcome is the removal of the residual moisture film from water-cooled insulated cable products during production. The removal of this moisture film from extruded products proved inherently difficult to achieve and the previously employed compressed air nozzles were inefficient at drying the wire/cables and costly to run.
However, ACI’s new ‘LINE-Dry’ System appears to solve this problem whilst at the same time achieving significant savings in energy costs. Compared to the original compressed air systems, it is estimated that ACI’s blower-powered wire/cable drying system can give up to a 10-fold reduction in energy cost savings, which potentially equates to savings of £1000s per annum.
"Since the installation of ACI’s LINE-Dry System product quality has definitely improved", stated Paul Randall, Production Director of Concept Cables. "Achieving a consistent and acceptable drying standard has always been difficult and costly when using compressed air, but with ACI’s blower-driven drying unit, we have overcome our drying difficulties and saved money as well."
ACI’s blower powered LINE-Dry system can handle products up to 25mm in diameter at speeds of 500m/min. The blower is an ACI variable speed ‘Multi-Stage’ unit controlled via a speed controller, which gives flexibility to accommodate different products and line speeds.
Two versions are available, one with the dryer heads enclosed to contain displaced moisture the other is an open unit.
With both versions, the blower and speed controller are mounted on legs and enclosed in an ABS plastic enclosure to prevent moisture ingress.
Air is delivered at up to 2.8psi (80in. SWG) at speeds of 8,800m/min (28,900ft/min) at 80oC.
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