Squeezing out 50% of energy costs with latest Resilio Roll breakthrough

The latest Resilio Roll from Richard Hough Ltd.

RHL Managing Director, Anthony Ashton

Energy costs for de-watering and drying are among the most expensive overheads facing textile wet-processing firms. So a system which can halve these costs – and pay for itself within two months – has the potential to make a massive impact on overall profitability.
And these benefits are available now, thanks to a revolutionary further breakthrough in de-watering roll technology by Richard Hough Ltd. (RHL), the UK-based specialist producer of covered squeezing rolls. The company has just announced the results of a two-year development programme, which has dramatically improved the efficiency of its Resilio roll, to the point where the latest version achieves twice the de-watering percentage of the conventional hard rubber rolls widely used in the industry.
Detailed technical enhancements to the Resilio's dual-layer construction have produced amazing gains in performance, according to RHL managing director Anthony Ashton: "As we carried out laboratory trials on the improved roll configuration, the result was so incredible that it could only be described as a revolutionary step forward," he said. "With the new improvements, we were obtaining de-watering results that were double those of the traditional hard rubber roll. In layman's terms, we were now saving a cool 50% of our customers' energy costs!"
RHL, headquartered at Bolton, Lancashire, has a proud 200-year history of manufacturing de-watering rolls for the textile processing industry. The original Resilio roll concept, developed in 2008, was itself a major innovation, combining the best features of hard and soft elastomer coverings. The 'patent applied for' system is now installed in dozens of textile plants worldwide, where its de-watering claims are being justified daily under industrial conditions.
Before the invention of the Resilio, rubber-covered squeezing rolls had improved little over many years, apart from hardening of the elastomer cover from 85 to 97 on the Shore D scale of hardness between the 1970s and the 1990s, leading to a reduction in residual moisture of around 15%. Softer elastomer cover types had not proved successful for de-watering, as they caused nip widths to be increased, making it more difficult for the liquid to escape from the fabric. So the hard elastomer roll became the norm for de-watering and final squeeze nips prior to the dryers.
The Resilio changed everything, by combining the best features of hard and soft covering compounds to create a unique, dual-layer squeezing concept. A hard sub-layer acts as the narrow nip element while a soft top layer is pushed into the warp and weft interspaces of the fabric, where the water droplets tend to gather.
The result of applying this concept on the original Resilio roll provided "truly revolutionary squeezing power," Mr Ashton says, "with average improvements of 30-40% being obtained on a regular basis with both knitted and woven cotton and synthetic fabrics."
Translating this performance into savings for the user, RHL calculates that a typical, eight-compartment stenter frame will cost about €125,000 per year in energy for drying, so that savings of at least €30,000-40,000 per year are conservatively estimated for each processing line.
Since those figures were produced, however, RHL specialists have been investigating ways of improving squeezing performance still further. And intensive laboratory trials have shown that a dual-layer system offers multiple possibilities for this.
Basically, it was found that the hardness and resilience of the sub-layer and top layer could be enhanced, to take the de-watering effect to a new, previously unimaginable level. The standard Resilio concept was based on a sub-layer of 97 Shore A and a top layer of 65 Shore A, giving a combined hardness of around 72 Shore A at the surface and a consequent de-watering effect that was a 30-40% improvement on the traditional 'hard rubber' roll.
New trials by RHL increased the hardness of the sub-layer from 97 Shore A to around 100 Shore A – or, using the Shore Durometer scale, up to 80 Shore D. The resilience of the compound at this hardness was also optimised. This means that the soft top layer is pressed in the nip against the fabric and ultimately against the hard sub-layer. The harder and more resilient the sub-layer, the more efficiently the top layer and fabric layer are pressed against the sub-layer, leading to a further increase in the hydro-extraction effect.
RHL then looked at improving the resilience of the top layer. The original top layer had a resilience reading of 34%, but tests carried out with a specially-developed compound named 'Super-Dynamic' – with a resilience of 48% – showed that this compound was more efficient. It worked better by being pushed into the contours of the fabric and conforming more readily to its contours, which meant that the top layer was pressed more efficiently into the interspaces between the warp and the weft, where the water droplets gather.
Says Anthony Ashton: "Suddenly we had results of even greater significance, with de-watering that was twice that of hard rubber rolls. In other words, it meant we could now claim to be able to halve our customers' energy costs."
Figure 1 shows examples of some of the de-watering results obtained in RHL's tests, comparing the latest Resilio roll against the market leader, processing various knitted fabric types. The residual moisture level is shown as a percentage for each fabric. Since many companies do not use the 'market leader' roll, comparisons will often be even more significant, with the Resilio producing results that are twice as efficient in terms of residual moisture.
For users, the actual technology behind the new Resilio roll is simple and straightforward. The rolls can be incorporated into a new machine, or an existing installation, without problems and existing shafts can easily be used to take a Resilio covering. That makes Resilio's cost-saving capabilities available to every textile processor and machine manufacturer, with a payback time of only one or two months for the complete Resilio cover.
So impressive are the benefits of the latest Resilio roll that potential customers may take some persuading that the claims made for the system are genuinely achievable in practice, Mr Ashton says: "Probably the greatest task we at RHL now have to undertake is to convince the textile processing industry that Resilio rolls are truly as good as we testify, but the performance benefits will be apparent immediately they are installed and running, and the proof will be in the reality of the savings our customers will enjoy."
 

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