Porous Diffuser for Laminar Protective Gas Flow
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional tubular bagging machines experience significant losses of protective gas due to turbulent flows and inefficient gas composition, leading to increased consumption and reduced shelf life of packaged products.
Innovation Solution
The method involves introducing protective gas into the bag via a diffuser creating a laminar flow, continuously measuring the bag atmosphere, and controlling the gas flow and composition using an analyzer to maintain a specific target value, ensuring efficient gas usage and optimal packaging.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If protective gas is supplied at high pressure to rapidly build up the protective gas atmosphere in the bag, then the atmosphere composition can be established quickly, but significant amounts of protective gas escape into the environment through partially open bags
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs a porous diffuser element through which protective gas is introduced into the bag. The porous structure creates numerous small flow channels that generate laminar flow patterns, reducing turbulence and preventing protective gas from escaping through the partially open bag opening. This resolves the contradiction by enabling rapid atmosphere build-up through efficient gas distribution while minimizing gas loss.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the flow regime parameter from turbulent to laminar by using a diffuser with specific pore size and distribution. This parameter change allows the protective gas to be introduced at sufficient pressure to rapidly displace the atmosphere while the laminar flow characteristics prevent gas escape, thus resolving the contradiction between productivity and substance loss.
2Ease of operation
If protective gas is introduced via a lance, then the gas can be supplied directly into the bag, but turbulent flows occur leading to inhomogeneous atmosphere composition
Solution Approach 1:
The lance is replaced by a porous diffuser element that distributes protective gas through numerous small pores. This creates laminar flow patterns throughout the bag volume, ensuring homogeneous atmosphere composition. The diffuser maintains ease of operation as a simple gas supply device while eliminating the turbulence problem.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of introducing gas through a single lance opening, the patent creates multiple small flow channels through the porous diffuser surface. This copies the gas introduction function across many small points, achieving homogeneous gas distribution and laminar flow without compromising the simplicity of the gas supply system.
3Reliability
If significantly more protective gas is supplied than corresponds to the volume to be displaced, then the desired atmospheric composition can be ensured, but considerable losses of protective gas occur
Solution Approach 1:
The porous diffuser element enables precise control of protective gas introduction by distributing gas through controlled pore structures. This ensures the desired atmosphere composition is achieved with minimal excess gas supply, as the laminar flow efficiently displaces the existing atmosphere without creating turbulence that would cause gas escape and waste.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent incorporates an analyzer that continuously monitors the atmosphere composition inside the bag and provides feedback to the control system. This feedback mechanism allows the gas supply to be precisely regulated, ensuring the desired composition is achieved without supplying significantly more gas than necessary, thus reducing protective gas consumption while maintaining reliability.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach reduces protective gas consumption, ensures a homogeneous gas composition, and enhances the shelf life of packaged products by minimizing gas mixing and loss, while maintaining precise control over the packaging atmosphere.
Implementation Method 1
the protective gas is introduced into the bag via at least one diffuser in the form of a laminar flow
Data Source
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AI summary
A tubular bag machine is equipped with a device for feeding a continuous film, a forming device for forming bags from the continuous film, which is equipped with a forming section that forms the continuous film into a tube, a longitudinal sealing unit and a transverse sealing and cutting unit for sealing the bags longitudinally and transversely and for cutting the bags from the tube, with a feeding unit for feeding a product to be packaged to the bags and with a device for supplying protective gas, wherein the device for supplying protective gas has at least one feeding nozzle equipped with at least one diffuser made of a porous material, such as sintered metal, which protrudes into the formed, but not completely closed, bags.According to the invention, it is proposed that the composition of the atmosphere in the bag is continuously measured and the inflow of protective gas is regulated depending on the measured composition.