The Kaluga Brewing Company, part of South African Breweries has ordered a number of In-Line Airknife Dryers from ACI.
Replacing compressed air nozzle systems, the Airknife Systems have been purchased in order to eliminate the rusty crown cork problems that the compressed air system was failing to eliminate on its Miller Beer filling lines.
Nikolay Zlatev, Maintenance Manager for KBC was initially unfamiliar with airknife technology. However, after a consultation period he believed that the system could be the solution to Kaluga's drying problems. Initially ordering one system, the success of this has resulted in further Airknife Systems being purchased and delivered to the Russian Brewery.
The ACI In-line Dryer is a complete stand-alone unit that is predominantly used in the bottling and canning sectors. As the name suggests, the system has been designed to be integrated into existing lines with minimal disruption - units simply straddle the line without any modifications to the production line.
Manufactured in Stainless Steel 316 with 'bottling standard' black polyamide fittings, the ACI blower is fully enclosed with a two-stage filter arrangement with a differential pressure gauge to indicate when filters require any cleaning.
Several variations of this system are available depending mainly on the size of vessel being dried, and the speed of the production line itself.