By retrofitting pneumatically operated angle seat valves from Schubert & Salzer, the company Van Drunen Farms in Illinois, USA, the suppliers of freeze-dried products, has enhanced the performance of its freeze-drying plants significantly. Rick Ouwenga, the manager of the plant in Momence, has calculated the period for the Return on Investment for this plant’s efficiency-boosting measures has began just a few weeks.
Freeze-drying along the sublimation curve necessitates an exactly defined temperature-negative pressure balance so that the cell structure, colour, form, flavour, and nutritional value of the dried raw ingredients can be retained to the greatest possible extent. With a new freeze-drying plant that has had Schubert & Salzer shut-off and control valves fitted in its steam system, Van Drunen has implemented a leap in productivity. The temperature control process of the new plant can be run with greater precision and in a much shorter time thanks to the Series 7010 and 7020 angle seat valves. This time gain is considerably noticeable with the cycle being reduced by 10-15%, depending on the product this can be several hours for many of the products -. Rick Ouwenga on this subject: “This is a great benefit for us as not only do we optimize the energy efficiency, we also obviously considerably increase our plant throughput.”
This resulted in Van Drunen retrofitting almost all of the existing freeze-drying plants with Series 7010 and 7020 angle seat valves, the majority of them also being equipped with Type 8049 digital positioners.
