PETpla.net Insider 04/ 2013

PRODUCTS 39 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 04/13 www.petpla.net Storage gets makeover The storage department may not be as visible as other functions and can be overlooked, which means that there may well be opportunities for improvement in this area, in order to raise consistency in the end-to-end management of plas- tic processing. Moretto says that it has dedicated a part of its research and development activity to enlarge its product range to include storage and the development of new, integrated solutions, based on the application of higher technology. Its Silcontrol solution is described as an integrated storage depart- ment management system, which synchronises material arrival with sorting to silos and helps to reduce human error. Entry material is identified by a bar code control and is automatically despatched to the identified silo. Silcontrol manages the tank truck connection to the silo loading pipe and verifies the exact connection. The process is displayed on a control panel that shows silo loading level. It also identifies any anomalies and allows operations on individual devices connected to each silo. A luminous signal indicates the system operating status, on the control panel and the silos’ main valves. Moretto says that Sil- control can also be integrated in its Mowis supervising system. www.moretto.com Water treatment system Krones AG offers water treatment systems for the food and beverage industries. The systems incorporate individual units that can be used with fresh water from wells, tap water, or surface water. They also include media filtration with multi-layer or activated-carbon filters for removing sand, oxides, manga- nese, iron, flavourings etc., as well as ultra-filtration for decon- tamination and reverse osmosis for demineralisation. Customised systems can be created from the individual units. Krones claims that energy consumption is up to 20% lower than with con- ventional systems. They have been designed to consume less electricity and compressed air and to produce minimal waste- water quantities of concentrate. Frequency-controlled pumps prevent water hammers during start-up and shut-down and the reverse-osmosis membranes are rinsed with permeate, for protection against uncontrolled furring. Rinsing in ultra-filtration is performed using filtrate and the activated-carbon filters are sani- tised with hot water, rather than steam. The standard resource- osmosis unit is made of a combi- nation of stainless steel and GRP but can be made entirely from stainless steel and sanitised with hot water, for protection against microbiological contaminations. www.krones.com