Drying up moisture difficulties

Brewer installs high-speed blowers and air knives to cut capping and labeling problems.

Pw 5920 Lion Brewery A

Lion Brewery, Wilkes-Barre, PA, was encountering some problems with excess moisture on the bottling lines. When its malt beverages exited the pasteurizing tunnel and were conveyed to the labeling station, soapy water was sprayed onto the conveyor belts for lubrication. But the soapy water also was coating the bottles and causing problems with label application. Some of the labels were positioned askew or displaying an unsightly bubbling effect. The wet environment also was creating moisture pockets under the bottle crowns, which sometimes led to discoloration around the crowns.

Lion’s head of maintenance Ken Houston notes, “In recent years, our line speeds have doubled. We were producing 300 bottles per minute, and now we’re up to 600 to 700 per minute.” Lion’s production rate increases have made the drying challenge even greater. Four lines of tightly packed 7-, 12-, 16-, and 24-oz bottles each are engineered to run at 700 bpm with Harland (www.harlandamerica.com) labelers. And there were repeated labeler shutdowns to resolve crooked and bubbled label difficulties.

Of the four bottling lines, three were using air comb-type air nozzles and compressed air to blast off bottle moisture, with little effect. Houston notes, “The problem with wet bottles had been going on for some time. We tried air nozzles, vortex nozzles. Some worked a bit better than others, but nothing solved it. We use about 200 cubic feet per minute total of compressed air for all the lines at our facility. But even with 50 horsepower of compressed air, we don’t have enough air to dry bottles effectively at our new higher line speeds.”

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