Air knife system meets extruded foam challenge

Engineers at Meech International enjoy solving challenging drying applications, and have had success where others failed, by applying the JetStream Air Knife System to extruded foam drying

A manufacturer of extruded polystyrene foam insulation boards needed a powerful and effective drying system that could completely remove water from the insulation boards before they were sent to the trimming/cutting machine.

Although the application sounded relatively straightforward, there were some complicating factors.

Manufacturing extruded polystyrene boards involves passing polystyrene crystals and additives through an extruder at high temperature and pressure and forcing the resulting mixture through a die.

As it exits the die, it expands to form foam.

Before being shaped, the foam is floated on water to cool it down, but in order to ensure that the final cutting process is both clean and productive the boards need to be dry.

This requires the residual water to be removed as efficiently as possible.

However, this wasn't as easy as it sounded due to the fact that the boards have a rough "orange peel" surface.

This increases the surface area and consequently traps more water, making it more difficult to dry.

As well as drying the foams for processing, the system needed to be capable of blowing off the water for recycling, and keeping the factory environment clean and dry for health and safety compliance.

Having already proven the JetStream air knife system in complex drying applications , Meech engineers were convinced it would do the job.

And it did.

The basis of operation of the JetStream system is that high-pressure air is generated at the blower unit, delivered to the air knives via ducting and then discharged from the air knives at a very high velocity.

In the case of the extruded polystyrene foam boards, JetStream manifolds were used to create a "letterbox" and the boards passed through.

This arrangement ensured that the boards were completely dry before going on to the next stage of the process.

Job done.

"JetStream has proved itself time and time again for challenging drying applications" explains Adam Battrick, International Product Manager for Meech JetStream products: "Not only does it dry efficiently but it can replace existing and costly compressed air systems that are commonly used.

JetStream provides increased performance for considerably lower running costs".

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