Wood Pellets - Form Fill Seal
Client
Land Energy are leading providers of wood pellets and biomass boilers nationwide. Land Energy are an accredited Biomass Suppliers’ List (BSL) source of wood pellets and use Forestry Commission approved sources of wood fibre either in the form of sawmill waste or rejected logs. https://www.land-energy.com/
Challenge
Land Energy was originally sold a bagging system by pacemaker however the bagging rate was too slow and the weighing accuracy was unreliable. Land Energy contacted Webster Griffin asking us to visit their site in Scotland for our assessment of how we could improve the performance of the packing line.
Land Energy were looking for fast and accurate production.Webster Griffin recommended the latest in form fill seal technology to satisfy Land Energy requirements.
Solution
Webster Griffin proposed a high speed fully automatic Form Fill Seal bagging machine to bag wood pellet products in commercial weights of 10, 15 and 18kg bags. The system included the following components:
- Velocity Form Fill Seal bagging machine with Ropex sealing system
- Surge hopper above the bagging machine to house and ready product to be bagged
- One automatic net weigher including electronic load cell system to deliver bagging weight accuracies of +/-0.5%
- Photoelectric cell to detect the registration mark on the film, and control the film unwinding operation
- One parallel vertical sealing bar with anti-adhesive Teflon coating
- Electric Moto drive unit for the positive precise high-speed movements
- Colour touch screen HMI control panel
- Integrated system of powered belt conveyors to deliver complete automation
- Out automatic bag printing system, programmable ink jet coder, to print the date & time onto one side of the full bag
Result
The system was successfully commissioned at the Land Energy site delivering a throughput up to 650 bags an hour. The system presented the following benefits to Land Energy:
- Significantly increased throughput of 10-11 bags/minute and up to 720 bags an hour matching demand.
- Improved bag weight accuracy of within 0.2 to 0.5% per bag.
- Improved reliability and automation – it is not necessary for an operator to monitor the machine constantly.
- Reduced labour input – The system operates fully automatically with reel changes taking 10 minutes every 6 hours.
- Continuous production – The system can operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year whilst delivering high accuracy bagging.
- Ease of product changeovers – The form film seal bagging machine is designed for faster product changeovers. Additional forming tubes were supplied with the system.
Land Energy reported that “the machine has been a very cost effective investment which has paid for itself within 15 months, owing to in line automation, increased throughput and improved weight accuracy which has resulted in less product given away.”
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