Bottling Plants

The Customer

The SMI Group is today one of the largest manufacturers of bottling plants, machines for producing PET bottles through blow molding, and packaging machines worldwide. The group consists of various companies that manage the production of different plant components, thus offering turnkey plants tailored to the client’s requirements.

Business Issue

In a country like Dubai, where there are no watercourses and wells are very rare, the production of drinking water plays a strategic role. This is the purpose of the Mai Dubai plant, which includes all the production phases: from desalination and purification of seawater to bottling and distribution.
Three bottling lines produce up to 12,000 bottles per hour in various formats using a PET blow molding machine. The bottles are then filled, labeled, and packed on pallets.

For the proper functioning of the bottling lines, it is necessary to:

• Cool the water from 45°C to 30°C after desalination and purification, with a flow rate of 75 m³/h.
• Cool the PET bottle forming molds.
• Cool the oven circuit.
• Cool the control electrical panels.

The client’s request involved us in the design of the cooling system and the supply of the main components. The client needed a partner capable of developing an integrated system with particular attention to:

• Reliability: the production plant is designed to operate 24/7.
• Efficiency: the plant’s logic integrates energy sources and manages temperature, ensuring optimal operation even in challenging environmental conditions like those in Qatar

The Solution

1 x WSW

• A 50 kW water-cooled chiller cools the PET container forming molds, the oven, and the control electrical panels of the lines.
• It was preferred over an air-cooled chiller because the process water at 20°C, being more constant and lower than the external air temperature, allows for condensation at lower temperatures, improving the system’s efficiency.

3 x WPA Techno

• Three chillers cool the process water with a power of approximately 500 kW each, maintaining the water at 18°C even with ambient temperatures of 40°C
• Dual refrigeration circuit and tandem compressors ensure redundancy and variable capacity
• Designed for external temperatures up to 50°C
• Customized solution optimizes the use of refrigerant R410A and improves energy efficiency.
• The chillers operate in parallel and sequencing, managed by the STULZ C2020 electronic control, which optimizes partial load operation and reduces the compressors’ ON-OFF cycles

1 x Hydronic Module

The hydronic module, part of the WPA unit circuit, includes a 2500-liter insulated tank with expansion vessels and safety valves. Positioned on the hot side of the circuit, it optimizes efficiency by reducing thermal losses, which is essential for the high temperatures in Qatar, and decreases thermal inertia at startup. Three pairs of redundant pumps recirculate the process water, while a seventh pump supplies condensation water to the WLWD8 chiller.

1 x Heat Exchanger Group

A 316L stainless steel heat exchanger cools the drinking water with the WPA chiller water before bottling. The temperature is regulated by an electro-pneumatic three-way valve controlled by a temperature controller.

Results

Thanks to the new cooling system designed and supplied by cosmotec, the customer has been able to reduce energy consumption both under full load and partial load conditions. The redundancy of key components, such as the chillers and centrifugal pumps, ensures a high level of reliability for the system, minimizing downtime and associated costs.

Proposal Values

• Reliability
• Competence
• Efficiency