Next Generation of Mechanical Vapor Recompression

TLT-Tur­bo , a ven­ti­la­tion fans and sys­tems man­u­fac­tur­er, has launched a new range of mechan­i­cal vapor recom­pres­sion fans, with ceram­ic hybrid bear­ings that pro­vide an excep­tion­al­ly long oper­a­tional lifes­pan. Inte­grat­ing the lat­est ven­ti­la­tion tech­nolo­gies, this fan offers numer­ous advan­tages regard­ing per­for­mance effi­cien­cy, min­i­mal main­te­nance and high reliability.

The TLT-Tur­bo fan for mechan­i­cal vapor recom­pres­sion (MVR) has been in devel­op­ment since 2012 since the first case stud­ies were car­ried out. Fol­low­ing inten­sive dis­cus­sions with clients, TLT-Tur­bo estab­lished that a need exist­ed for low main­te­nance MVR fans. This was fol­lowed by four years of inten­sive research, prod­uct test­ing and con­sul­ta­tions with clients. The first MVR fans were rolled out in 2016 while con­tin­u­al prod­uct improve­ment has remained a focus area for TLT-Turbo.

“MVR fans have been avail­able on the mar­ket for some time but instead of just fol­low­ing the trend, TLT-Tur­bo took time to ensure that we came to the mar­ket with a com­plete­ly new, state of the art MVR solu­tion,” says Mario Schmidt, Head of TLT-Turbo’s Vapor Fans busi­ness seg­ment. “And we con­tin­ue to have on-going dis­cus­sions and feed­back exchanges with our clients world­wide in order to con­tin­u­ous­ly adapt and improve our MVR offer­ing to their requirements.”

Accord­ing to Schmidt, the fea­tures of TLT-Turbo’s MVR fan, such as the low­er main­te­nance require­ments and the intro­duc­tion of hybrid ceram­ic bear­ings, under­scores their com­mit­ment to devel­op­ing prod­ucts in close align­ment to their clients and their needs, and also speaks to TLT-Turbo’s key objec­tive for con­tin­u­al innovation.

The imple­men­ta­tion of hybrid ceram­ic bear­ings is a key dif­fer­en­tia­tor of the TLT-Tur­bo MVR fan. “Our clients are amazed by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a hybrid bear­ing oper­at­ing at high speed with­out cir­cu­lat­ing oil. Con­ven­tion­al roller bear­ings do not pro­vide the required sup­port for oper­at­ing the fan in a broad oper­a­tional speed range with­out run­ning into harm­ful res­o­nance fre­quen­cies (under crit­i­cal oper­a­tion). Thanks to con­tin­u­ous enhance­ment in recent years, espe­cial­ly through the use of ceram­ic mate­ri­als, more effec­tive roller bear­ings are avail­able today. The use of hybrid bear­ings with steel rings com­bined with ceram­ic rollers has been estab­lished in many indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions and in the case of the TLT-Tur­bo MVR fan, hybrid ceram­ic bear­ings mean sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er main­te­nance require­ments and bet­ter oper­a­tional per­for­mance,” Schmidt explains.

The hybrid ceram­ic bear­ings used in TLT-Tur­bo MVR fans are life time greased and can be oper­at­ed for up to 10 years with­out requir­ing main­te­nance. To enhance this ben­e­fit for clients, TLT-Tur­bo intro­duced an addi­tion­al device to the fan’s design that allows for the bear­ing to be re-greased from the out­side in order to fur­ther sim­pli­fy main­te­nance and to increase the fans’ ser­vice life.

High motor speeds, a wide range of opti­mized impellers and the allowance for high tem­per­a­ture and pres­sure increas­es com­ple­ment the life­time greased hybrid ceram­ic bear­ings to ensure that clients ben­e­fit from the enhanced per­for­mance and effi­cien­cy that they have come to expect from TLT-Tur­bo prod­ucts. These fac­tors allow for oper­a­tion of the fan below crit­i­cal speed which ensures both reli­a­bil­i­ty and safe operation.

“Reli­a­bil­i­ty and safe­ty are key con­cerns for our clients and TLT-Tur­bo has addressed this in the MVR fan by using high qual­i­ty com­po­nents. Thanks to the use of the hybrid bear­ings, no oil sup­ply or oil pump is nec­es­sary which means that no oil can con­t­a­m­i­nate the prod­uct. In addi­tion to this, the fan also fea­tures tem­per­a­ture and vibra­tion mon­i­tor­ing and remote mon­i­tor­ing of the bear­ing is pos­si­ble as well. Our entire man­u­fac­tur­ing process is car­ried out accord­ing to all major qual­i­ty stan­dards, includ­ing DIN ISO 9001,” says Schmidt.

The TLT-Tur­bo MVR fan is suit­ed to numer­ous appli­ca­tions in the chem­i­cal, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, waste water treat­ment, and the organ­ic nat­ur­al prod­uct pro­duc­tion indus­tries as well as in the food and bev­er­age process and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors. “Since 2018, we have received 35 orders for MVR fans across the globe with one instal­la­tion com­plet­ed. Thus far, the feed­back from clients has been very pos­i­tive. We have received reports that the bear­ing tem­per­a­ture is con­sid­er­able low­er than that of oth­er com­pa­ra­ble MVR fans and that our fan runs with less vibra­tion than oth­er MVR fans,” Schmidt affirms.

“Over­all, TLT-Turbo’s objec­tive was to offer our clients a mechan­i­cal vapor recom­pres­sion solu­tion that would out­per­form what was cur­rent­ly avail­able on the mar­ket. We have deliv­ered a fan that requires less main­te­nance while pro­vid­ing high effi­cien­cy and reli­a­bil­i­ty. This is exact­ly what clients would expect from TLT-Tur­bo as a world class fan man­u­fac­tur­er and glob­al ser­vice organization.”