New UV100 Vacuum Pumps for the No. 1 Beer Producer in Mexico
With nearly 100 years of experience in producing hollow glass containers for the manufacturing, distribution and sale of beer in Mexico, Grupo Modelo boasts 17 famous beer brands, including the popular Corona Extra beer in transparent glass.
Following the latest moulding trends with IS machines to achieve higher precision, minimal waste and high-speed productivity, Modelo decided to invest in vacuum.
As the added value of vacuum in the hollow glass moulding process is sometimes difficult to define, Pneumofore made a “vacuum-only” test on the IS machine in another Mexican plant in order to evaluate the effective contribution of the vacuum capacity to glass forming.
The test was performed with a Pneumofore UV16 VS30 vacuum pump which was enough to supply vacuum to one IS machine with ten double sections.
The vacuum was combined with low pressure to get even better results in terms of reduced rejection rate at the cold-end quality inspection and quantity of bottles per minute on each IS line.
In 2020, the company installed a Pneumofore UV100 vacuum pump equipped with variable speed drive in the Tierra Blanca plant.
The air-cooled machine, with nominal installed power of 220 kW and up to 6,610 m3/h capacity, was connected to the IS machine on furnace no. 2 along with the existing vacuum systems.
An additional furnace is now being prepared and gradually all the IS lines will be connected to the new vacuum system that has now being upgraded with three UV100 in total.
The three vacuum pumps, based on the Rotary Vane technology of Pneumofore, are capable of supplying up to 20,000 m3/h as total capacity in the vacuum level range of 50 to 450 mbar.
The Variable Speed drives guarantee the constant vacuum level by adapting the machine’s rotation speed to the production requirements and ensure high power savings.
Image: One of three Pneumofore UV100 vacuum pumps at the Grupo Modelo Tierra Blanca plant.