Purity of natural water products ensured by ZT oil-free air compressors
Princes Gate Spring Water, based in Wales, has achieved significant energy savings and production improvements at its Wales-based bottling plant by replacing its oil-lubricated compressor installation with ZT oil-free equipment to provide a guaranteed supply of high-quality air and ensure the purity of its natural water products. The company’s plant in Narberth, Pembrokeshire, bottles mineral-rich spring water filtered naturally through the local landscape. The production operations need a constant 108 l/s supply of high quality compressed air at 7bar to meet the demands of the process line’s low-pressure air users, such as air cylinders, manifolds, filling equipment and inking machines − all of which contribute to an annual output of 55 million bottles of spring water from the company’s on-site source.
VSD Variable Speed Drive Oil-free compressors Class 0 Compressor Technique Airnet Compressor Technique
Compliant to the Code of Practice for Food Grade Compressed Air
Optimum oil-free air quality and product purity
The company’s decision to install two oil-free compressors, the ZT37 VSD and the ZT18, together with new AIRnet pipework, was influenced by the need to ensure optimum air quality and product purity. Atlas Copco’s process air complies with the standard of air purity, ISO 8573-1(2001), and also embraces the Class 0 industry standard which measures all three forms of oil contamination: aerosol, vapour and liquid.
Production environment benefits from oil-free air
Prince Gate’s compressor upgrade was influenced not only by the need for guaranteed 100% oil-free air, but also for the production environment benefits of lower operational noise levels and the elimination of the time and costs involved in oil condensate disposal. What’s more, the integrated frequency converter feature of the Atlas Copco VSD (variable speed drive) compressors varies the speed of the drive motor to exactly match the changes in compressed air demand, thus using the minimum amount of energy and saving up to 35% in energy consumption costs.
The net effect of these production line improvements has now enabled Princes Gate’s management team to put plans in place for increasing the company’s annual output to 70 million bottles and to undertake a major expansion of retail sales.
The Atlas Copco equipment is proving to be very efficient. It produces the 100% oil-free, high quality, dry air we need and is extremely reliable. In our view, the installation of the compressor plant was carried out very professionally and we have no hesitation in recommending Atlas Copco’s equipment to other companies.