Ty-phoo tees up auto energy saving dryer
May 30th 2006

Ty-phoo recently installed a domnick hunter PNEUDRI dryer to purify compressed air at its production facility at Moreton, Wirral – helping to keep down the cost of the nation's favourite drink.

Some 6.4 million cups of Ty-phoo are drunk every day, and that doesn’t include 2 million cups of fruit and herbal tea. Put another way, 10,000 tonnes of tea bags are bought every year.

Compressed air is used extensively throughout the Ty-phoo facility to operate pneumatic machinery. To help retain taste and a fresh flavour tea is vacuum packed. Compressed air is essential for this operation and because the air comes into contact with the product, air quality is paramount: Too much moisture in the air would cause serious quality defects, resulting in the loss of valuable product batches.

Desiccant dryers have twin chambers of desiccant material. While one chamber is drying the other regenerates using dried purge air to remove moisture from the desiccant. The fast flush of purge air forces the compressor to work harder, which consumes a relatively high amount of electrical energy.

domnick hunter dryers include a dewpoint dependent switching (DDS) system, which can reduce energy costs by up to 80%. DDS continuously monitors dewpoint, provided it does not fall below -40°C, cycle time is extended so that no purge air is consumed for regeneration, which provides the energy savings.

Energy management is a big concern for the food industry because the sector is very competitive. Products are priced to appeal to consumers, however price must reflect the cost of production so keeping energy costs under control wherever possible is essential.

Philip Valentine, Engineering Projects Manager at the Ty-phoo facility, says “The domnick hunter DDS system gives us valuable cost savings. When you consider that this facility operates around the clock, having a system that continuously monitors dewpoint and makes sure dryers aren’t wasting energy is reassuring. The dryers automatically revert back to full power to ensure dewpoint doesn’t fall, which could cause quality issues.”

The dryer was installed by local domnick hunter partner, AB Air systems, which also covers service and maintenance.

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