Professional Documents
Culture Documents
BENEFITS OF
RF PACKAGE DRYING
Quality
RF drying results in excel-
lent shade and hand. With
conventional forced-air drying,
the outside of the package is
often overdried, resulting in
color streaks and a harsh
hand. Forced-air drying can
also distort package shapes.
With radio-frequency drying,
energy is concentrated on the
wettest parts of the package tend to "catch up" to the
so the outsideof the package packages that started out less
does not overdry. Steam es- wet. (However, drastic differ-
caping from the inside of the ences in moisture levels can-
package swells the fibers, im- not be corrected in an RF
proving the hand. Because no dryer.)
air is forced into the pack- Figure 1 shows the differ-
ages, they retain their shape. ence in drying characteristics
between convective and RF
drying. The convective drying
With conventional drying rate is linear over the initial
methods, it is difficult to drying period while the RF
achieve a uniform moisture curve asymptotically ap-
content in and among pack- proaches zero moisture as
ages. In an RF dryer, final drying proceeds. In other
moisture content within a words, the wetter the pack-
package can be controlled age, the faster the rate of
within plus or minus one per- drying.
cent after hydro-extraction '.
Also, packages of different Just-in-Time Processing
moisture content can be dried One company decreased
at the same time in an RF batch time for drying rayon 20
dryer. Because the wettest hours by installing a radio-fre-
packages dry fastest, they will quency dryer. Previously, the
process called for yarn pack-
ages to be hydro-extracted
Drying Time of Package Dryers down to a moisture content of
65 percent and then loaded
Drying Time in Minutedlb Poly-Cotton onto large metal pin frames
0.16 I I and rolled into steam-heated
0.1 4 ovens. The packages were
baked for 32 hours to reduce
0.12 the moisture content to ap-
proximately 10 percent.
0.1 Now the baking time has
0.08 been reduced 11 hours, to ob-
tain a moisture content of 20
0.06 percent. After baking, the
0.04 packages spend 45 minutes
in the RF dryer to redude the
0.02 moisture content to 8 percent,
0 at a rate of 1650 pounds of
120kW Thies "S" Avesta Port yarn per hour.
RF Dryer As seen in Figure 2, radio
waves dry packages faster
than a variety of other dryers.
For customers processing
'i
!small lots, RF dryers save prevent access to potentially
even more time because lots dangerous places in the dryer
with different colors can be where the high intensity field
dried together. between electrodes could
burn flesh. Radio waves do
VersatiIity not produce any long-term
RF dryers can successfully changes in the-tGman body.
dry a wide variety of
shades- from pastel to dark. Low Production Costs
They can also dry a wide vari- When RF drying is pre-
ety of fibers, including nylon, ceded by centrifugal extrac-
acrylic, cotton, spandex, rub- tion, drying costs are compa-
ber (in elastic bands) and rable to pressure dryers and
blends. Also, wet shipments of cheaper than port dryers and
yarn can be dried on the cone oven dryers. A study by the
in an RF dryer without having Instit ute of Textile Technology
to be rewound. reported that at $3.50 per
1000 pounds steam and
Good Working Conditions $0.05 per kilowatt-hour, the
RF dryers give off no fumes energy cost to dry 50/50 PO-
or gases, little noise, and are lyesterkotton yarn packages
xcoolto the touch. Steam from was $0.036 per pound of yarn
the processed goods is in a port dryer, $0.019 per
vented outside the plant, so it pound of yarn in a Avesta
does not affect indoor air tem-
perature. Conventional con-
vective heaters produce emis-
sions when dyes and other
Energy Cost of Package Dryers
chemicals are heated while Energy Cost in Dollars/lb Poly-Cotton
the packages are drying; be- 0.04
cause radio waves heat only
the water, these emissions are
reduced in a radio-frequency 0.03
dryer. Furthermore, because
air is not forced into the pack-
ages, the working environment
is kept clean of lint.
0.02