The exhaust air from the dryer contains nearly all of the energy that was used for evaporating the moisture in the product. With our new Counterflow Recovery Unit we can recover most of that energy as well as the water from the exhaust air. This means we can reduce net energy consumption of the dryer by up to 65%.
An electric heatpump is used to generate both the cold water that we need to condensate the wet air in the Counterflow Recovery Unit, as well as the hot water that we need to heat up the drying air inside of the dryer. This way we can run the entire dryer on electricity instead of gas or steam.
However, for various reasons it is attractive in most countries to apply both gas burners and heat pumps, making it a hybrid dryer.
Last but not least, when you dry with electricity and if your electricity is renewable, then CO2 emissions from your drying process can be eliminated. And since the dryer is by far the biggest single energy user in the extrusion line, the CO2 emissions of the extrusion line will go down by 50-60%.
