Drying of polyamide powder -

SAIREM

Our client, an airbag manufacturer, was looking for a way to quickly and
effectively dry the recycled polyamide powder from plastic scraps generated
during the production of the bags
Customer needs
Our client, a large chemical company, is one of the leading manufacturers of
car airbags in polyamide. The shape of the airbags leads to producing a lot of
scraps during the fabrication. In order to recycle this expensive raw material,
and avoid further pollution, the company blend it into a very fine powder,
which must be dried before being reused.
The usual drying solutions, such as fluidized bed, steam or infrared, proved to
be poorly efficient, or difficult to implement in an ATEX environment. The
company was therefore looking for an innovative solution for drying this
sensitive product.

Main constraints
Polyamide powder is a delicate product to handle. Once dried it becomes
explosive. And when it’s heated above 70 °C, it turns yellow. Moreover the
moisture must be lowered from 20% to 0.5%. The challenge is to dry the
powder gently and homogeneously, and safely !
The volumetric heating properties of radio frequencies and microwaves
therefore seemed particularly indicated in this case, by heating the product as
a whole from the inside, rather than by conduction from the surface.

Solution proposed
Our company proposed a high frequency dryer to dry the polyamide powder
in a few tens of minutes. It delivers a power of 120 kW and can evaporate up
to 120 kg of water per hour. It has been specially designed according to ATEX
constraints, in order to avoid any risk of powder explosion.
In addition to dry the product from the inside, our unique 50 Ohm technology
allows precise power and temperature control for a quick, gentle, and uniform
drying.
Key benefits
The SAIREM experts have chosen the most suitable technology. Indeed, the
heating selectivity of the radio frequencies on PA allow to heat the water to be
evaporated, but not the polyamide powder itself. So it makes it possible to
evaporate the water without exceeding the 70 °C limit.
Our engineers also determined the thickness of the product to be treated and
the optimum power density in order to obtain a perfect result.