When compressed air systems at the Swan Brewery in Western Australia became stretched to their limits, the company turned to suppliers of alternative drying methods for its canning and bottling lines. Rather than install additional compressed air capacity, Swan decided to look at dedicated drying systems and turned to Air Control Industry's (ACI's) local agent, Perth based dynamic Engineering, for advice. The result of this consultation was the installation of an ACI JetPlate bottle drying system and two of the company's can drying tunnels (illustrated).
Installed immediately before the labelling station and the can dryers prior to inkjet coding station, the JetPlate installation delivers drying air via stepped slots in the face of the system's opposing plenum chambers. This allows the passage of bottles of various heights (190-276mm in this case) without having to reconfigure the unit, ensuring that drying efficiency is not compromised by manual adjustments. The two can tunnels, meanwhile, feature innovative 'Y' shaped slots in the plenum chambers, developed in-house by ACI to achieve maximum drying efficiency. The height of these units can be adjusted in seconds to accommodate different can sizes.
A novel feature of the Swan installation is that the bottle and can drying lines share a single blower (an ACI EP10 unit). Using a 'Y' shaped diverter valve allows the air flow to be switched between the bottle and can drying lines according to production needs. In addition to these dryers, Swan also uses ACI's conventional air knives to remove water from cans as they leave the pasteuriser, just prior to being channelled into single file for inkjet coding.
By way of a 'bonus', the airflow through the ducting generates sufficient heat to aid the drying process, thus avoiding the need for a secondary heat source.