Flexible and compact: shell-and-tube heat exchangers with cross-corrugated tubes

Dependable thermal product treatment for foods and beverages with maximised energy savings – that’s what the newly developed VarioAsept shell-and-tube heat exchanger from Krones provides. It features ultra-compact dimensions, including media interfacing and energy modules installed on a single base frame for outputs of less than ten cubic metres an hour. This means Krones can now supply product to filling lines for PET containers or beverage cartons in the low output range from 3,000 to 10,000 litres per hour. For higher outputs of between 15 and 60 cubic metres per hour, the larger heater models can be supplied, which by reason of their size have separate media-interfacing, tube and energy modules. The entire prewarming and heater concept is based on regenerative utilisation of the thermal energy, so that out of the entire treatment sequence energy recovery rate of about 85 per cent can be achieved.

The tube modules in the prewarming and cooldown zones are in cross-corrugated design, and are able to bridge very high spreads in terms of output and viscosity. This means the products involved are optimally and gently warmed up and cooled down again. Depending on the viscosity of the product concerned, heat transfer with this tube design is achieved fast and gently. In the heater zone, by contrast, where the viscosity will mostly decrease due to higher temperatures, so that the product increasingly resembles water, smooth tubes are used.

Advantages of the Krones Varioasept shell-and-tube heat exchanger

• Handles all viscosity variants, from water-viscous to highly viscous products
• Option for regulating the system’s volume flow in dependence on the product, from 100 to 30 per cent
• Gentle, microbiologically safe treatment of the product
• Maximised energy recovery from thermal product treatment