© Photo | © ebm-papst / Bernhard Huber

Bone dry

The new heat pump dryers from Primus save over 60 percent of the primary energy compared to their prede­ces­sors. A RadiPac from ebm-papst does its bit here to ensure energy effi­ciency


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The City Dry Clean laun­drette in Munich’s Karl­strasse now has nine Primus type “T13-HP” heat pump dryers.

Compa­nies that claim to “care about the envi­ron­ment” in their adver­tising should back this up with real action. Primus, a major manu­fac­turer of indus­trial washing machines, finishers and dryers with produc­tion based in the Czech Republic, put this motto into prac­tice. The new “T-HP” gener­a­tion of heat pump laundry dryers saves around two thirds of the primary energy compared to previous models. This is an impor­tant sales argu­ment for oper­a­tors of laun­drettes or self-service laun­drettes, as energy costs make up a large propor­tion of the oper­ating costs here.

One of the compa­nies impressed by Primus’s appli­ances was Firbitex GmbH. The family-owned company from Munich runs twelve laun­drettes under the “City Dry Clean” brand. The cleaning specialist is grad­u­ally upgrading its laun­drettes to Primus dryers and washing machines. Ten have already been upgraded with the remaining two due to follow in 2015. Director of Oper­a­tions Mario Leitner: “The devices’ poten­tial for saving energy and lowering costs is clear to see.” He was also convinced by the machines’ reli­a­bility.

“The devices’ poten­tial for saving energy and lowering costs is clear to see.”

Mario Leitner, Director of Oper­a­tions FIRBITEX GMBH

Firbitex was there­fore ready for a Euro­pean premiere. The City Dry Clean laun­drette in Munich’s Karl­strasse now has nine type “T13-HP” heat pump dryers being used every day, the first to be fitted in a self-service laun­drette. Each dryer has a drum volume of 285 litres and can hold 13 kilo­grams of laundry. The fan drive provides 0.2 kilo­watts of power, with the drum motor providing 0.25 kilo­watts.

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Primus heat pump dryers are more effi­cient. Espe­cially laun­derettes could benefit from new devices.

The new dryer design, which Primus calls EVO4 tech­nology, is based on performing the drying process in a closed system, the use of a heat pump and energy-effi­cient EC fan and a low connected load of less than four kilo­watt hours at 16 amps.

Petr Opavsky, chief engi­neer at Primus: “In stan­dard dryers, the connected load is gener­ally between ten and 25 kilo­watt hours, which is signif­i­cantly higher than our appli­ance.” In addi­tion to the low consump­tion values, Primus achieves savings by removing the unnec­es­sary extrac­tion instal­la­tion and not using a large elec­trical connec­tion. When looking for the right fan compo­nents, Primus found what they were looking for in ebm-papst.

“The use of EC tech­nology was a premiere for us. The fans passed the test with flying colours.”

Mario Leitner, Director of Oper­a­tions FIRBITEX GMBH

The spec­i­fi­ca­tions made some tough require­ments. In addi­tion to a high humidity protec­tion class, temper­a­ture resis­tance up to 60 degrees Celsius and an air flow of at least 800 cubic metres per hour at 750 pascals of pres­sure increase were needed.

ebm-papst had the right fan for the job in the shape of a 250-millimetre, medium-pres­sure RadiPac centrifugal fan with a power consump­tion of 490 watts. A test instal­la­tion in 150 machines of the previous series proved its suit­ability.

Petr Opavsky from Primus veri­fies: “The use of EC tech­nology was a premiere for us. The fans passed the test with flying colours.” In addi­tion, the installed RadiPac with the effi­ciency class 71 also exceeds the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the ErP Direc­tive for 2015.

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