PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2012

PREFORM PRODUCTION 14 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 06/12 www.petpla.net Puccetti and Piovan’s PETchiller project Cool running * Puccetti SpA – Plastics Division The company is part of the Puc- cetti Group, which is active in several industrial sectors. Fol- lowing the requirements of an increasingly demanding market, the Puccetti Plastics Division has extended its product range by manufacturing preforms of differ- ent weight and with BPF-type of closures. Italian company Puccetti Plastics Division, founded in 1998 and a producer of PET preforms, is a member of the Puccetti Group*. When it went looking for optimised cooling systems for its pre- form production plant, the solutions found were devel- oped in close collaboration with Piovan. The company was involved in all stages of the production process. The perform production process requires a high mould cooling capac- ity, so as to obtain preforms with suit- able and constant mechanical char- acteristics. The original refrigeration system at Puccetti Materie Plastiche consisted of two centralised chill- ing units for low-temperature chilled water and one evaporation tower for high-temperature cooling water. The total thermal load, represented by moulds, robots, mould dryers, hydrau- lic system of the injection moulding machines and cooling for the PET dryers, is more than 1,500kW. According to an energy analysis of the total consumption of the two centralised refrigeration units, the evaporation tower and the pumping units, the amount of energy used each year was 2,313MWh. The location of the production plant has a characteristic temperature range between 5 and 25°C for 85% of the year. In the first stage of the pro- ject, which was aimed at studying and verifying the best solution, the working conditions of the existing system were analysed and possible alternatives assessed. Piovan proposed to replace the entire existing refrigeration system with the new PETchiller, a product offered by Piovan to obtain high energy efficiency from the chilled water system of any preform produc- tion process. PETchiller is offered in three possible configurations with integrated air cooling, with remote air cooling, or with water cooling. Energy savings Two high energy efficiency solu- tions were considered for Puccetti Materie Plastiche, both composed of free coolers and water-cooled chiller units. One solution involved a central- ised PETchiller, the other individual PETchillers. The energy consumption analysis gave the following results:  existing solution: 2,313 MWh/a  centralised PETchiller solution: 1,762 MWh/a  individual PETchiller solution: 1,272 MWh/a. The decision to choose the indi- vidual PETchiller solution, which offers savings of nearly 50% in electric power consumption, was made at quickly. This was the first step in a program to replace the entire system and was completed in spring 2010. www.piovan.com Piovan’s PETchiller installed above the injection moulding machine Piovan freecooler installation