Finishing - July-August 2022

18 SUSTAINABILITY
Net zero system
For decades fossil fired convection
driers/ovens have been applied in most
processing lines.
Whether for flexo, gravure, heat set or
screen - printing presses or wet-coating
processing of adhesives, lacquering,
infiltrations hotair driers have been the
industry standard. Even though these driers
build large, are not very dynamic and not very
flexible for process variation adjustments – but
low energy operation costs due to the low gas
price to electricity price – ratio (mostly < 1/3
even down to sometimes < 1/5!).
So electro-thermal, like induction or
infrared process systems have not been
competitive. What makes our new aLITE the
difference?
The advanced Light Initiated Thermal
Emission (aLITE) technology is a high energic,
photonic energy source in combination with
integrated high velocity controlled warm air
impingement, ventilation and defined
moisture suction.
Thanks to the possible almost instantaneous
high energy and mass transfer an
- extreme dynamic (even within a fraction of
a second) drying process and
- therefore a minimal foot print (most
compact drying technology in the market) and
- flexible adjustable to relevant process
variations (like width, speed, coating type,
water content and
- defined and precise process parameter
control and
- no heat up nor stand by operation
enables high
• productivity and
• product capacity and
• process efficiency
and generate no CO2 emissions, which
are/will be banned in these up-coming years
in more and more regions at the globe.
So that for a wide range of processing lines
the aLITE -systems are al-ready now price
competitive with respect to the energy
operations costs- even without reflection of
the CO2 taxes.
When adding also the todays and already
defined further CO2 taxes, it becomes a cost
killer for the gas systems. Additional significant
cost savings are given (see graphic) for
-investment in process equipment and
- building and
- infrastructural installations
resulting from the extreme reduced space
requirements and environ-mental and media
supplies and treatments.
Finally aLITE can be even applied for very
temperature sensitive processes (like printing
and wet coating processing on plastic
substrates, corrugated boards or polymer
textiles).
Finishing - July/August 2022