Painting and drying using less hot air

Thanks to a new furnace design, energy efficiency in industrial steel strip drying can be significantly increased and the size of the facility drastically reduced. Using the planned process, investment and production costs can be cut by at least 40 percent. This is achieved through the use of infrared radiant burner technology. Implementing this energy-efficient method is the aim of ECCO, a project scheduled to run for four years coordinated by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and funded by the European Union with around eight million euros.

In industry, thin steel sheets wound on rollers are painted for garage doors, for example. The paint consists of a mixture of color pigments, chemical components and necessary solvents. In a continuous process, the steel strip coil is rolled out, the paint is applied to the steel strip, and then dried and cured in a furnace before the strip is cooled down and rolled up again.

Full Text: Press Release 068/2018

sf, 08.06.2018