Rough Vac

The food industries can have many messy processes, whether it is poultry evisceration, deboned waste conveying, bottling, or sugar cake filtration. Liquid ring vacuum pumps (LRVP’s) are often utilized as the backbone of these processes because they can handle the soft solids, debris, and particles that can easily get sucked into the vacuum pump. So how does a LRVP work, why does it work in these processes, and how to make sure they keep working?

Many of us are familiar with sizing vacuum pumps based on throughput, process pressure requirements, chamber size, pump down times, conductance and leakage. In a lot of cases, humidity becomes an afterthought and unexpected things happen. Some of these unexpected things we learn to live with, like emulsified oil. In other cases, the unexpected things prevent the pump from performing the job it was intended for. 

Wintek Corporation was contacted by a plastics manufacturing company in the summer of 2015 to evaluate their process vacuum capabilities. The customer was looking to replace a recently purchased used vacuum system to be used in a PET solid state polymerization/drying application. The process required high heat and vacuum and needed to run at 1 mBarA (0.75 Torr). The customer had purchased the dryer and accompanying vacuum system from an overseas supplier. While they were happy with the dryer, the vacuum system was not delivering the desired performance.

Deciding on the most suitable vacuum technology for an industrial application can be challenging. This decision can be relatively easy if it is simply finding a drop-in replacement for an existing pump, but if a process keeps crashing an existing pump, it can get complicated when you are tasked with re-evaluating all the available options to find the best solution. I am hoping to highlight a few key factors to consider when you run into this type of scenario.

In this article, we discuss both vacuum pump inlet and exhaust filtration and explore how protecting your vacuum pump can increase productivity and help businesses reach their sustainability objectives.

You have your equipment, everything is set up and ready to run, but what about your lubricants? Too often, lubricants receive little attention with respect to their use in rotating equipment. Even the most reliable cars in the world will encounter problems on a short commute if the wrong transmission fluid is used during a flush. The same is true with your Positive Displacement (PD) blower or vacuum booster that operates around the clock. In our experience, approximately 80% of all bearing and gear failures are the result of improper lubrication.

There’s a lot of vacuum going on in the woodworking industry. From treatment to routing to handling, vacuum systems help meet the demands for higher speed performance, greater precision, faster production and better quality. Vacuum technology enhances the skills and talents of operators. Woodworking facilities of all sizes and production capabilities can precisely target their vacuum requirements to deliver maximum output. Here’s an overview of the most significant woodworking vacuum applications.

The right vacuum solution not only ensures product quality in meat processing operations; it  also helps companies achieve important sustainability goals. Such is the case at two leading meat processing companies in Germany, both of whom added Busch Vacuum Pumps and Systems solutions to their operations and saved energy and more as a result.

Vacuum can be used in many ways for the meat processing and packaging industry. From mixing ingredients to evisceration (removing organs, excess fat, bones, etc.), to the washing/preparation of the meats or even in the packaging of the meat itself, vacuum is critical to the industry. 

Many heat-treating applications put difficult demands on vacuum pumps in general and oil-sealed pumps, in particular. Byproducts from the heat-treating process can contaminate the vacuum pump oil and create higher vapor pressures that cause deteriorated vacuum levels in the heat-treating chamber, or buildup and blockages in the pump mechanism.