Conveying, storage, homogenisation and filling of the dryblends
Integration of the heater-cooler mixer in the control and process control system
The Solution
Raw material handling and mixer feeding with high cycle rate and large component diversity
The PVC is added from the external silos via suction weighing onto the main scale above the heater-cooler mixer. The PVC is selected from the various external silos via a multiport valve, which is arranged directly in front of the suction conveyor scale. This enables very high similarity in the loading of the main scale.
All other auxiliary materials, which are present in big bags or sacks, are placed on the top level of the mixing tower of the heater-cooler mixer.
Titanium dioxide and chalk are also conveyed from external silos and are available at the same level of the raw material task from big bags and sacks.
The AZO COMPONENTER®, the flexible container system from AZO, assumes the weight of these substances as well as those of titanium dioxide and chalk from the exterior silos. It collects the various components without contamination in accordance with the recipe prescribed by the process control system and automatically transfers these to the mixer provided for this purpose.
For the addition of micro components, a ManDos station is available for weighing these components. The manually weighed components are fed into the mixer in the further course of the process via a cycle belt.
This variant allows for highly flexible production with a high number of raw materials and recipes, as well as an automatic feeding of several heater-cooler mixer lines.
After the heating-cooling mixing process, the dryblend is emptied into a mixing tank. In order to achieve higher homogeneity of the various dryblends, they are conveyed into two AZO homogenising silos and mixed again there. After a preset time in the mixing tank and in the homogenising silos, the dryblend is filled into an AZO bulk goods container.
The containers are placed directly on the extrusion lines and feed the extruders there.
The complete system, including the heater-cooler mixer, is controlled, monitored and completely documented by the AZO process control and visualisation system as well as the PLC. The orders are received, processed and documented back to the ERP system via an interface to the ERP system.
The entire system can be viewed using remote maintenance.