Tempco Blog articles

Test bench for cooling radiators in racing super cars

13/10/2023

The automotive sector, and especially the field of super cars and racing cars, involves some interesting applications for Tempco TREG HCE thermoregulating units, employed for test benches of radiators. All of the greatest automotive racing car manufacturers use thermoregulating units for the simulation of the proper functioning and for performance testing of water and oil radiators installed in high performing racing cars.

Cooling the endothermic engines in racing cars is indeed a very crucial task in order to ensure maximum safety, while the damages caused by over heating are plain to see. This aspect is in fact even more thorny speaking of very high performance racing cars, for which in addition achieving savings in terms of weight becomes even more important. For example, it is enough to think about what happened during the last 24h in Le Mans, lest June, when the Ferrari 499P n. 50 had to prolong its pit stop in order to complete the substitution of the radiator that got damaged by a stone.

Tempco centraline termoregolazione banchi prova radiatori auto da competizione

In order to ensure the reliability of cooling radiators performances on endothermic engines in automotive applications, it is then necessary to carry out long testing campaigns in special test benches similar to small wind tunnels, where components are tested upon mechanical and physical stress simulating the severe working conditions that components will be exposed to during the racing.

Tempco centraline termoregolazione banchi prova radiatori auto da competizione test bench

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Energy saving with power supply modulation

06/10/2023

We have talked many times about heating systems using electrical resistors with power supply modulation in order to achieve significant energy savings. These are in fact the typical mono-fluid thermoregulating units for industrial processes, and in particular we are going back to a plant that Tempco has installed years ago for a customer, aimed at heating a fluid in preparation vessels, in a very short time lapse.

Having preparation vessels with very high volume capacity, the power required was high as well, we’re talking about 150 kW or electrical power for the initial heating phase in order to heat diathermic oil at the temperature or 250° C. But once the fluid is heated, the cycle must be maintained and the installed power is only partially employed, or even no more required.

We then suggested the customer to install the control panel of the electrical resistors with triode thyristors, and thus with modulating power, a kind of inverter, that allows to manage the resistor supplying power based on the actual real need.

After two years of functioning, we visited the customer and downloaded the data from the data logger installed on board of the thermoregulating unit. By speaking with him, we have noticed that the maximum power consumption was happening during the initial heating phases, after which the heating power required for the production process used to go down even at 25% of it.

The idea of the user for the additional new plants we will install next year has been to extend the initial heating time cycles, programming the start of the production plant in advance of a few hours in order to have a lower installed starting power capacity, and therefore drastically reduce the energy consumption.

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UK, indefinite extension of CE marking recognition within Great Britain market

29/09/2023

Tempco welcomes with great favour the reassurances that are coming from the UK regarding activities and installations within the Great Britain market thanks to the indefinite CE marking recognition beyond 2024 deadline just announced by the UK Department for Business & Trade (DBT).

Starting with December 2024, and following Brexit, in fact the CE marking should have been replaced by the UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed), product marking used for products being placed on the market in Great Britain. Therefore, it will now be possible for firms to continue using the CE marking alongside UKCA.

The indefinite extension of the use of CE marking applies to 18 regulations owned by DBT, including machinery, pressure equipment, equipment for potentially explosive atmospheres (ATEX) – and therefore also thermoregulating units, heat exchangers and thermal energy management solutions -, measuring instruments and electromagnetic compatibility.

Tempco estensione marcatura CE mercato UK

The decision came as part of a wider package of smarter regulations designed to ease business burdens and help grow the economy by cutting barriers and red tape, lowering business costs and time required to place products on the market and benefiting consumers.

“The Government is tackling red tape, cutting burdens for business, and creating certainty for firms – said Kevin Hollinrake, UK’s Business Minister -. We have listened to industry, and we are taking action to deliver. By extending CE marking use across the UK, firms can focus their time and money on creating jobs and growing the economy”.

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PCHE exchangers for hydrogen with Tempco and Microchannel Devices at Hydrogen Expo

21/09/2023

PCHE exchangers (Printed circuit heat exchangers) are the key innovation that Tempco will present at the stand of our technological partner Microchannel Devices at the Hydrogen Expo in Bremen (Stand 5F120), the main European event dedicated to new technologies and solutions using hydrogen for a more sustainable future, that is going to be held on 27-28 September in Germany.

Tempco is exhibiting at Hydrogen Expo as a manufacturer to show visitors the great innovation represented by full inox PCHE exchangers, a new cutting-edge typology of heat exchangers that responds to the highly challenging needs of the emerging hydrogen industry., usually made in AISI 316L with the possibility to realize them also using titanium, aluminium and other special alloys.

Printed circuit exchangers can indeed handle extremely high pressures, up to 900 bar, and a wide temperature range from -250° C up to +400° C, and even further using some particular alloys, fulfilling the extreme conditions requirements of hydrogen applications and for cooling tasks in fuel cells. The outstanding performances are possible thanks to the special manufacturing process employed for PCHE exchangers, realized using the Diffusion bonding technology.

Tempco Hydrogen Expo 2023 Microchannel Devices

Diffusion bonding is a solid-state welding technique used in metalworking, capable of joining metal plates and accomplishing the welding by applying at the same time high pressure and high temperature. It therefore operates on the principle of solid-state diffusion, wherein the atoms of two solid, metallic surfaces intersperse themselves over time, creating in fact a unique object with no joints. The process allows to obtain heat exchangers with extraordinary structural integrity and more compact, 85% smaller and lighter than traditional heat exchangers. The technology also allows to realized highly customized heat exchangers, with very complex design of internal heat transfer channels obtained via chemical etching, ensuring extremely high thermal transfer coefficients and high efficiency for hydrogen applications.

Tempco is looking forward to welcome you next week with Microchannel Devices, Stand 5F120, at Hydrogen Expo, on September 27-28 in Bremen.

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Free flow plates in heat exchangers for wire drawing of plastics

15/09/2023

The plates showed in this new video on our Tempco YouTube channel are very particular plates for plate heat exchangers, characterized by very wide channels. These are called Free flow plates, indeed having large channels and having no contact points.

Usually, plate heat exchangers increase their thermal transfer efficiency when the number of contact points between the plates increases, thus increasing the turbulence rate of fluids. But these contact points also become spots for the settlement of dirt, when the exchangers work with dirty fluids rich in suspended particles.

Free flow plate heat exchangers were then born in order to avoid this problem. In Tempco we’ve recently supplied a couple of free flow exchangers with DN150 connections aimed at cooling water for die plates in wire drawing of plastic materials. In fact, during the wire drawing process, a plastic material wire comes out of the wire plate and gets collected in a tank containing cooling water. The plastic wire then proceeds to the cutting section, where plastic granules are produced.

Cooling water then becomes clearly full of plastic dusts and plastic chips. Using traditional plate heat exchangers in this particular application, the exchangers would become clogged in a very short time lapse.

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Pharma lab thermostatation with MODBUS communication

08/09/2023

Welcome back at September’s restart, let’s return on topic talking about Tempco’s thermoregulation solutions with a recent application we have realized for a laboratory serving the production in the pharma sector.

The solution consists in an integrated system for thermostatation of pharma products in a laboratory supplied as a plug & play monobloc skid unit. The unit covers a working temperature range from +10° C up to +120° C, with a chiller serving a PID thermoregulating unit, equipped with remote interface using MODBUS communication protocol.

Tempco termoregolazione laboratorio farmaceutico 1

To meet the particular requirements of the laboratory processes, a splitted solution has been chosen in order to allow the unit to make different sections independent and to achieve fully efficient diverse heating/cooling temperature ramps.

Tempco termoregolazione laboratorio farmaceutico 2

Tempco termoregolazione laboratorio farmaceutico 3

Tempco termoregolazione laboratorio farmaceutico 4

Tempco termoregolazione laboratorio farmaceutico 5

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Good August and a Cool Summer 2023 from Tempco!

01/08/2023

Tempco summer 2023

Dagli scambiatori di calore alla calura estiva, Tempco augura Buon Agosto e Buona Estate a tutti, ci rivediamo a Settembre!

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Fouling factor, each type of exchanger has its own

28/07/2023

The Fouling Factor is a subject that periodically comes back into the spotlight, a subject that we’ve indeed already treated in other videos in our Tempco YouTube channel and from the pages of this blog. Fouling Factor in plate heat exchangers is in fact a crucial element to determine the sizing of the exchanger upon the conditions of a certain application.

The occasion to go back on it was given by a recent experience for an application made for a customer, who requested a fouling factor with a value usually related to shell and tube exchangers. The results were utterly deadly, because sizing the exchanger using fouling factor values suitable for a shell and tube exchanger led to a slowdown of the speeds of fluids inside the exchanger and therefore to an increase of the fouling, drastically reducing the efficiency of the thermal transfer rate.

The solution to the problem has been to remove 30% of the plates from the exchanger, getting back to a fouling factor value more suitable for a plate heat exchanger.

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Thermoregulation in green chemistry for food sector waste oils recycle

21/07/2023

Recently we have developed a cooling and thermal transfer system aimed at oil thermostatation in a reactor for an Italian startup operating in the waste oils recovery from the food sector.

The customer is operating in the research within the Green Chemistry field, for the synthesis of ester products derived from waste oils, based on circular economy principles and the use of renewables raw materials. The oils which are treated and transformed to obtain innovative solvent products for the packaging, printing and cosmetics industries, are part of the so-called third generation biomasses that don’t require the use of products directly coming from food crops nor subtract soil and resources from the agriculture chain.

Tempco centralina termoregolazione recupero oli esausti Green Chemistry

The equipment supplied by Tempco for this particular and innovative application includes:

Chiller
Refrigerated water storage system
Heat exchanger
Inlet pump feeding to the synthesis plant

Tempco centralina termoregolazione recupero oli esausti Green Chemistry centralina unit

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Energy saving in latex objects production

14/07/2023

In a new video on out Tempco Youtube channel, we talk a further more about a very interesting application for a vulcanization machine that was designed and manufactured by HUREX Suisse in Locarno in collaboration with Tempco and with Giovanni Caschetto, an engineer with a wide experience in the latex sector.

This is in fact an application for latex vulcanization. For the production of mattresses, pillows or any kind of object made in latex, molds are employed to give the desired shape to the product, and then these molds are heated inside autoclaves using steam.

Liquid latex, or the blend containing liquid latex, gets injected inside the molds, and the mold gets heated in order to achieve the expansion of the blend and to obtain the finished object.
Usually, the process was carried inside autoclaves injecting steam, in order to heat the mold. The interesting solution that we have deployed employes instead a warm fluid circulating within the mold, directly heating the product. In a similar way to what happens in the molding of plastic materials.

This solution is indeed very much interesting because it allows to achieve an energy saving of about 50% in terms of thermal power required to heat the mold and accomplish the vulcanization process of the final latex product.

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