Efficiency boost for paint plant

A powder coating line at Cooper Lighting and Safety, Doncaster, uses Lanemark's TX tank heating systems and its FD oven drying counterparts - in the form of the latest FD-C (GA) gas and air modulating control system.

The installation is for the powder coating of steel and aluminium panels and components. These are on an overhead conveyor that enters the system via a fourstage, pre-treatment facility.

Here, a degreasing phosphate tank and a demineralised water rinse tank sit under two spray chambers. Each tank is heated by a Lanemark TX60 burner system, which fires into a small diameter immersion tube heat exchanger, through the process tank walls. Lanemark's TxCalc modelling software was used in the heat exchanger design, predicting efficiencies in excess of 80%, which are now being achieved.

Components transfer to a three-pass dry off oven that uses a Lanemark FD10-C (GA) burner system, before proceeding to the automatic powder coating facility. An eight-pass curing oven has two Lanemark FD10-C (GA) burner systems - one at each end of the oven chamber.

Maintenance manager Tony Parkin, says: "The performance of the pre-treatment heating system together with the accurate temperature control and even heat distribution in both the drying and curing ovens, are central to the success of the operation, and they help speed throughput."