Nov 8 2010
A business partnership which developed the UK’s most energy-efficient dryer for the manufacturing industry has received the highest grade of ‘outstanding’ by the Technology Strategy Board.
The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between the University of Hertfordshire and Secomak, the industry leader in air movement technologies, which developed the Total Drying Solution for bottles and cans, was awarded the highest grade of ‘Outstanding’ for its achievement in meeting its KTP objectives.
The classification, which is only awarded to the top seven per cent of all KTPs, recognizes the exceptional contributions of the University and Secomak in developing industry-leading technological solutions for the drying industry.
The project has generated strong commercial interest with a recent order of £180,000 from a leading supplier of shaving foam; has led to KTP Associate, David Palmer being appointed as Capital Equipment Manager at Secomak and a further KTP between the company and the University for a marketing project.
The Total Drying solution is a drying tunnel with three parts: an innovative compressed air drying section, a blower driven stage and a controlled humidity atmosphere. Control of all systems provides intelligent stop/start when containers are present and moving. This saves around thirty per cent of the energy and the matching of the speed of the electrical blower to the water saturation takes this value to over fifty per cent savings.
'The big advantage of this system is that the machine is equipped with sensors which sense when product needs to be dried, rather than the dryer working all the time,' said David Palmer. 'This works in a similar way to energy-saving systems in hybrid vehicles and means that the energy consumption of our machine is directly proportional to the throughput of the product.'
The University, which is the UK’s leading business-facing University, has more active KTPs than any other university in the region and is in the national top twenty of KTP performers.
David Dell (KTP Project Supervisor) and David Palmer said of the award:
“This recent achievement completes a hat-trick of awards to recognise the technological innovations arising from this KTP partnership and reinforces the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Engineering and Technology as the leading academic partner for KTPs.”