Optimization of industrial drying processes for textil dryer and tunnelfinisher

For the industrial textil drying, as it takes place in large-scale laundries, are – in addition to the common household-drier – also “In-Time”-dryer established. These machines, so-called “tunnelfinisher”, have the function to dry the laundry quick and gentle. An additional facility is the use of damp to obtain the textils crease-resistant.

The principle of the tunnelfinisher operates like this: the laundry is hung up to a conveyour belt and is transported through several high heated chambers. The optional insertion of high-pressure damp caused the smoothing effect.

Tunnelfinisher are plants with highly energy costs. To reduce these costs, the GECO►C Team developed, in cooperation with the SOLBATEC company, an automatically control for the speed of the conveyour belt. Aim was to reduce the energy costs significant and to enhance the speed of the flow capacity for the laundry.

The original control of the tunnelfinisher was a manual adjusted tape speed, which could be converted if required. This implies in practice, that the speed has to be regulated depending on this textile, which needs the most energy for drying. The disadvantage is the waste of energy in case of facile drying materials and also a reduced speed of the average flow capacity.

With the aid of the contact-free temperature sensor, which is patented by the SOLBATEC company, the tape speed had to be regulated according to the textile temperature. While this industrial project our team developed and installed the necessary control system. Thereby could be demonstrated, that a significant enhancement of the flow capacity and therefore a cost reduction per piece of textile could be achieved.