New Solutions for the Process Industry

At Powtech 2019, Cope­ri­on and Cope­ri­on K‑Tron will present their ver­sa­tile bulk mate­ri­als han­dling solu­tions for var­i­ous process steps at their booth no. 4–290 in Hall 4. Along with the new­ly redesigned stain­less steel WYK divert­er valve for CIP clean­ing and the ZV rotary valve, now also avail­able in larg­er sizes, vis­i­tors will be impressed by the vari­ety of com­po­nents and prod­ucts for safe and eco­nom­i­cal bulk mate­ri­als han­dling that Cope­ri­on and Cope­ri­on K‑Tron offer.

New WYK Bulk Material Diverter Valve

For parts used in man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es in many sec­tors of the food, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and chem­i­cal indus­tries, the high­est require­ments in hygiene and puri­ty apply. More­over, fre­quent prod­uct changes and dif­fi­cult prod­uct char­ac­ter­is­tics require reg­u­lar wet clean­ing. If clean­ing expen­di­tures can be min­i­mized, com­pa­nies can save sig­nif­i­cant­ly on time and costs.

Cope­ri­on addressed these issues more than ten years ago, devel­op­ing the WYK for pow­der and pel­lets, which was award­ed the Inno­va­tions Award by the Powtech exhi­bi­tion in 2006. The divert­er valve enables CIP appli­ca­tions to ful­fill required cri­te­ria espe­cial­ly in the food sec­tor that come down to one thing: The divert­er valve must be absolute­ly clean and free of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion after wet clean­ing — with no addi­tion­al dis­as­sem­bly or man­u­al clean­ing. This saves time, effort and costs since man­u­al post clean­ing is not nec­es­sary. In doing so, the WYK divert­er valve can eas­i­ly be installed even at points that are poor­ly accessible.

Through­out its incep­tion, Cope­ri­on has con­tin­ued to devel­op the WYK divert­er valve based upon the col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence of past years. Its inno­v­a­tive basic func­tion has not changed: Dur­ing bulk mate­r­i­al con­vey­ing, the con­i­cal rotor seals the con­vey­ing pipes to each oth­er. Dur­ing CIP clean­ing, the rotor is min­i­mal­ly pulled out of the hous­ing and flushed by the clean­ing flu­id. Now, the divert­er valve has been opti­mized accord­ing to cur­rent EHEDG guide­lines (Class I EL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is cur­rent­ly in process). Cope­ri­on redesigned and opti­mized the CIP-capa­ble pipe seal­ing such that now oper­a­tion with even the finest pow­ders is pos­si­ble. The pneu­mat­ic dri­ves are sep­a­rat­ed — for turn­ing and pulling the rotor, respec­tive­ly — so that the rotor is sup­port­ed on both sides. Along with its com­pact design, the divert­er valve offers an improved cast design with increased sur­face qual­i­ty. All mate­ri­als con­form to (EC) Reg­u­la­tion no.1935/2004 and the seal­ing mate­ri­als are FDA-con­form as well. More­over, fur­ther flange con­nec­tions, such as those per DIN 11864, can be real­ized sim­ply on the housing.

The divert­er valve is avail­able in sizes DN 65, 80, 100 and 125. It is also avail­able as a stan­dard stain­less steel divert­er valve with­out the CIP clean­ing func­tion for non-wet clean­ing appli­ca­tions. The divert­er valve will be offered in Europe and Asia begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber 2019 and is expect­ed to be offered in the USA by year end.

New ZV rotary valve housing for pellets and coarse-grained products

Coperion’s redesigned and opti­mized ZV rotary valve is now also avail­able in sizes from 400 to 630. In com­par­i­son to its pre­de­ces­sor mod­els, it excels above all with a low­er gran­u­late destruc­tion dur­ing oper­a­tion. Cope­ri­on enlarged the inlet cross sec­tion with addi­tion­al pel­let deflect­ing pro­files. In doing so, an increase in through­put per­for­mance of up to 20% results.

Even noise emis­sions from leak­age gas expan­sion, which con­sti­tute the pri­ma­ry source of noise in high-pres­sure rotary valves (up to 3.5 bar dif­fer­en­tial pres­sure), have been marked­ly reduced with a new expan­sion open­ing design. Addi­tion­al­ly, Cope­ri­on inte­grat­ed the tran­si­tion of the elon­gat­ed open­ing to a pipe con­nec­tion with­in the cast. Beyond reduc­ing the noise emis­sion, an adapter is like­wise no longer required. More­over, the ZV rotary valve now has a stan­dard-com­pli­ant pipe connection.

Cope­ri­on at the Powtech 2019: Hall 4, Stand 290