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20 www.convertingmagazine.com® FEBRUARY 2010
Imagine you’re the victim of a natural disaster—an earthquake, a
hurricane, a flood. Now list the things you’ll need to survive
until help arrives. Besides medical care, a source of safe,
drinkable water likely tops your checklist of priorities.
Fortunately, you and thou-sands of other survivors of natural
disasters have turned to the water-filtration products of Hydration
Technology Innovations LCC (HTI). And those products are, in turn,
made possible by the Albany, OR-based converter’s newly rebuilt and
upgraded casting and drying lines.
At the core of all HTI water filters is an unusual
forward-osmosis (FO), cellulosic membrane capable of filtering
water mol-ecules out of any liquid (see “Anywater, Anywhere”
sidebar). The membrane, manufactured through a custom-engineered
high-tech coating system, works similarly to how a tree draws water
from damp soil. All contaminants are removed, even down to viruses
and bacteria.
“We just made an artificial tree root; basi-cally it’s the same
process,” explains Jack Herron, HTI project engineer. “We just make
it in sheet form, instead of tiny fibers.”
From the ground upThe brief history of Hydration Technol-
ogy’s membrane production was punctu-ated by a devastating fire
that destroyed the manufacturing lines in March 2007. HTI
immediately began to build a new plant, which presented the
opportunity to not only solve several web-handling problems that
had troubled the original lines but also
Hydration Technology’s web-guiding, tension-control makeover
fine-tunes its water-filtration membrane product for new
applications in new markets.
By Editor in Chief Mark Spaulding
High techat low speed
The drying line now uses a MAGPOWR VERSATEC™ tension control,
C-Series clutch and a Fife D-MAX web-guiding system.
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to fine-tune the finished product for new applications to serve
new end-use markets. All components were deliv-ered in late 2007,
and approved mem-brane was once again being regularly produced in
September 2008.
Today, a 5,000-sq-ft plant houses the separate membrane-casting
and drying lines as well as R&D facilities to investigate new
membrane materi-als. Conversion of membrane into fin-
ished products (shown below), including new spiral-wound filters
in sev-eral configura-tions is han-dled in a larger 24,000-sq-ft
plant. Other
operations include raw-material slit-ting/rewinding, bagforming,
RF-weld-ing of pouches, manual filling/sealing and final product
quality control.
In its production, the membrane begins as a cellulose polymer
dis-solved in a proprietary collection of solvents. Using a
standard coating method, this solution is applied to a back web,
which may be either a woven or wet-laid nonwoven fiber. The
ultra-thin, asymmetrical coating is partly infused into the back
web. Finished rolls are transferred to the drying line, where a
non-volatile coat-ing is applied to the web. Lastly, the treated
material is run through a con-vection dryer and rewound.
slow and steady wins the race
“It’s a very slow process and a very high-value product,” says
Herron. So, as elsewhere in converting, the challenge is to get
your tension control and edge guiding to act really fast to handle
a super-fast process, here it’s to get it to back off enough and
yet be very precise. We needed stabil-ity at slow speeds,
especially
with a long length of very thin material between unwind and
rewind.”
Key to the smooth operation and improved efficiency of the new
lines are several web-handling components supplied by the Maxcess
Intl. divisions (www.maxcessintl.com) of Fife Corp., Tidland Corp.
and MAGPOWR.
“We’re so slow that you could do a pretty good job with manual
web con-trol, but you’d have to constantly tweak it to make it
work,” explains Steven W. Peterson, HTI senior project engineer.
Manual guiding was good enough to make rolls later converted
in-house, but HTI is now seeking to do high-speed, form-fill-seal
product manufac-turing and contract packaging. “If we were going to
make more of our spiral-wound product, we needed better web
guiding,” he adds. “We had one very skilled operator, but we
couldn’t clone him to do all manual guiding.”
At the casting-line unwind now are a Fife Kamberoller® steering
guide (provides immediate lateral correc-tion), a Fife SE-22
infrared sensor
FEBRUARY 2010 www.convertingmagazine.com® 21
SpEciFicS:HYDRATiON TEcHNOLOGY iNNOVATiONS LLc: Albany,
OROpERATiONS: Forward-osmosis filtration-membrane casting;
coat-ing/laminating; slitting/rewinding; bag/pouchmaking;
spiral-wound membrane filter manufacturingpLANT SiZES 5,000-sq-ft
casting facility; 24,000-sq-ft converting facilityEMpLOYEES: 35
At the casting-line unwind are a Fife Kamberoller® steering
guide, a Fife SE-22 infra-red sensor (above) and a MAGPOWR “C”
Series magnetic-particle clutch.
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(capable of sensing the porous back web) and a MAG-POWR “C”
Series magnetic-particle clutch (driven the opposite way to achieve
the right amount of differential speed with the motor). Overseeing
these components are a MAGPOWR Cygnus® web-tension control (allows
adjust-ments using multifunction “smart keys” and a large backlit
display) and a Fife D-MAX Series web-guiding system (pre-wired and
pre-integrated for fast setup). The D-MAX is said to provide even
higher dynamic response than pre-vious controllers and displays
text, guiding nomenclature and web-guide graphics on a 122 x 92 mm
LCD.
Wrinkling had been a big issue with the membrane-casting process
because the web is typically only 3.5-mils thick, Peterson says.
The real struggle was with tension control along the full length
from unwind to rewind.
“There’s a lot of festooning of the material in the casting
tanks, so you get some stretching, and the unwind and rewind can
start fighting with each other,” he explains. “Maxcess worked with
us on stabilizing those tension fluctuations that gave us the
wrinkling. It all works well now. It’s pretty boring, but that’s a
good thing.”
Unusual core-shaft comboIn HTI’s original plant, changing rolls
was a slow,
complicated process that Peterson and Herron sought to remedy
with the new lines. The converter now uses Tidland Series 800 GX
ultra-lightweight aluminum shafts and Boschert safety chucks
throughout the two facilities’ unwinds and rewinds. An older Arrow
slitter/rewinder used to trim out-of-spec raw-material rolls prior
to coating has also been retrofitted with these components. “They
are very nice, inflatable bladder-type shafts, and we found them to
be very convenient,” Peterson says.
Because part of HTI’s membrane-casting process takes place
underwater, and the finished web must be kept moist, the company’s
roll cores are actually PVC piping. “Tidland specified a shaft that
could handle the loads we had and still get good traction on wet
PVC pipe,” Herron says.
Prior to full-production startup in September 2008, HTI
experienced some tension-control problems on its drying line.
Maxcess assisted with the MAGPOWR VER-SATEC™ tension controller
(uses an ultrasonic sensor to measure distance and roll diameter)
and retrofitting to a larger C-Series MAGPOWR clutch. “These
changes got the line running smoothly,” Peterson says.
components WAtcH02.10
22 www.convertingmagazine.com® FEBRUARY 2010
“AnYWAteR, AnYWHeRe” ViA FORWARD OSMOSiS
Albany, OR-based converter Hydration Technology innova-tions
LLc’s unusual Forward Osmosis (FO) process for water filtration can
provide life-saving, drinkable water from the most disgusting
sources you can imagine (tire ruts, floodwaters, ditches, stagnant
ponds). Just ask some of the survivors of Hur-ricane Katrina or the
US military personnel (above) that helped them or thousands of
other people hit by natural disasters…or even some of the millions
who live every day without a source of safe, drinking water.
Manufactured on a custom low-speed, high-tech coating line, the
FO filtration membrane works similarly to the way trees draw water
from damp soil or how people absorb the water they drink—by
separating water molecules from nearly any liquid. The water passes
through but larger molecules such as salts, proteins, viruses,
bacteria and parasites are all blocked. Much like Reverse Osmosis
but instead of applying high pressure to squeeze water from a
solution, FO uses a solution with high osmotic potential to draw
water through the membrane from a solution of low osmotic
potential.
The company’s extensive line of personal-hydration prod-ucts
range from the HydroWell™ that filters up to 40 liters/day down to
the X-pack™ that processes six liters. Most of the products include
sugar syrup to flavor the filtered water, which is safe to drink
but doesn’t necessarily taste very good without a little help. The
syrup is not just for flavoring, though. its sugar molecules
provide the osmotic driving force for filtration, which runs
without the pumping pressure typical of Reverse Osmosis.
HTi is also working on its SAFE infant Formula pouch,™ a way to
reconstitute infant formula (using water filtered by the FO
membrane) via a low-cost, easy-to-use zippered pouch. At the
opposite end of the spectrum, the beta-tested HydroW-ell Village,
which can produce 800 liters/day per membrane bundle, will support
small remote communities or be used in disaster relief.
But drinking water is just the start. The FO filtration
tech-nology has applications for numerous industries such as oil
and gas exploration, food processing, algae biofuels, methane
digestion and pharmaceuticals. For example, filter elements are
being used to treat pitwater in natural-gas wells, eliminat-ing the
need to transport truckloads of water into and out of remote
energy-exploration areas.
“We have one very skilled operator, but we couldn’t clone him to
do
all manual guiding.”Steven peterson
HTi Senior project Engineer
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FEBRUARY 2010 www.convertingmagazine.com® 23
In early 2009, the D-MAX Series web-guiding system and
control-ler was added as well. HTI opera-tors prefer the new
components because of their intuitive ease-of-use. “It’s been a
real, clean retrofit after our startup,” Peterson says.
experienced extrapolation
Both he and Herron have high praise for all the Maxcess Intl.
engi-neers they worked with during the casting and drying line
rebuilds. Because web-handling had been totally manual in the past,
using only MAGPOWR clutches, very little information was available
(mainly web widths and roll diam-eters) to help specify the proper
components and controls.
“We had been inventing the
whole [membrane-casting] process as we went along,” Peterson
says, but the end result has been thor-oughly successful.
What’s ahead for Hydration Technology Innovations? With its
purchase in March 2009 by Scott-sdale, AZ-based holding company
Innovations Management, plans for a major boost in production
capac-ity include designing a new mem-brane line to be sited nearby
or in the existing casting-line building.
Editor’s Note: At presstime, HTI was shipping its HydroPack and
HydroWell Village products to Haiti as part of international
earth-quake relief efforts. The donated supplies will provide at
least 6,000 people with one liter of clean drinking water each
day.
MORE iNFO:conVeRteR:HYDRATiON TEcHNOLOGY iNNOVATiONS Lcc,
541/917-3335, www.htiwater.comsUppLIeRs:FiFE cORp., 800/639-3433,
www.fife.com/htMAGpOWR, 800/639-3433, www.magpowr.com/htTiDLAND
cORp., 800/426-1000, www.tidland.com/ht
Above: Overseeing the casting-line web-handling components are a
MAG-POWR Cygnus® web-tension control and a Fife D-MAX Series
web-guiding system. top left: Uncoated substrate moves past HTI
senior project engi-neer Steven Peterson in the casting-line area.
Bottom left: Process opera-tor Mike Flores checks the new
web-handling controls on the casting line.