Coatings company makes process heating gains

 Nuneaton, UK - Coating applications company MetoKote UK Ltd has reported significant gains from the installation of gas burner tank and oven heating systems for a process line refurbishment at its Daventry premises, and also at the company’s Telford site.

The company is using three TX burner systems, from Lanemark International Ltd, directly on the pre-treatment process line to heat two spray cleaning stages - 320 kW & 420 kW - and a 600 kW zinc phosphate spray stage. A 60KW TX burner has also been installed indirectly for paint pre-heat via a combined heating and cooling water circulation system.

The TX burners fire into a submerged small diameter immersion tube heat exchanger that is sealed by flanged connections into the sidewall of the process tank. Metokote has reported improved operating efficiencies, of over 80%, in all TX burner installations as a result of the use of Lanemark’s unique TxCalc Heat loss and immersion tube heat exchanger design programme.

“We provide both a planned and an ad-hoc electro-coating service at the Daventry site so demand and throughput levels can vary,” said Tom Blood, MetoKote maintenance manager. “The ability, therefore, to hold process tank temperatures accurately is very important – the paint, for example, needs to be maintained at 30ºC all year round and in this example Lanemark’s heating arrangement works ‘hand-in-hand’ with a complimentary cooling system which takes over in the summer months.”

The project at Daventry, which was installed by pipe-work specialists Clearwater Technologies Ltd, which was also involved with the installation of the pipe-work services at the new facility at Telford. The latter unit features a series of seven-metre long tanks that provide an electro-coating facility during the manufacture of chassis units for a major OEM.

“Individual chassis are transported through the tank line on carriages before moving on to a series of pre-assembly stages including, for example, ‘bushing’,” said Glenn Jukes, MetoKote’s plant manager at the site. “It is a highly intensive process which commonly operates across three shifts with the system active up to 99% of the time.”

Again, Lanemark TX in-tank heating systems are central to the operation with a spray cleaner, two dip cleaning stages and a zinc phosphate tank all benefiting from TX 60 installations each rated at 600 kW. As at Daventry, paint pre-heat and summer cooling is provided via a water circulation system. The complete skid-mounted water tank TX burner system was supplied by Lanemark.