Is your heated mutator shaft leaking? Experiencing long lead times on rotary joints from machine OEMs?
Everyday, Triplex Sales Engineers help our customers solve their complex process problems. Through this process, we’re able to identify trends and recurrent problems and then either identify an existing product or bring to market a new one. In that vein, Triplex is excited to announce the launch of our newest product, the HZ Swivel Joint! The Triplex HZ swivel joint is a rotary joint designed specifically for SPXFlow/Waukesha Cherry Burrell Votator and Alfa Laval Contherms that use a heated mutator shaft to prevent product build up on the shaft during processing.
Why is this product necessary? Well, let’s start with how a scrape surface heat exchanger works. As mentioned above, thousands of food manufacturers and processors use scrape surface heat exchanger technology for controlled heating or cooling of highly viscous products. A scrape surface heat exchanger has 2 basic parts- a jacketed outer tube and a center mutator shaft that has blades to scrape the outer walls of the tube as product passes through. We need this scraping action to prevent burn on and ensure uniform product heating, as well as controlled cooling and crystallization of certain products. SSHEX’s can impact everything from product temperature to texture.
In some SSHEX applications- specifically, fats and oil applications- we’ll use a heated mutator shaft to prevent product from accumulating on the shaft and creating “chunks” in the final product. To accomplish this, OEM’s like Alfa Laval and Waukesha Cherry Burrell modify the mutator shaft to allow a heating fluid to pass through the shaft. Seems pretty straightforward, right? Just bring a supply and return hose, thread it in to the shaft, and you’re all set, right? Not so fast. Because that mutator shaft is rotating, we’ll need a rotary joint to allow rotation or the supply hoses and mutator shaft are going to fight each other.
The problem we found was that most of the OEM rotary joints we saw were expensive, carried long lead times, and were prone to leak. So we set out to bring to market a better solution and Triplex is excited to launch the HZ swivel joint for heated mutator shaft applications!
The HZ swivel joint is a robust, all steel, ball bearings and bellow assembly that is self-supporting and able to allow the transfer of liquid or gaseous media in rotating machine parts. Yes- you read that right- our HZ swivel join is gas rated. The HZ swivel joint is aftermarket retrofittable on existing Votator and Contherm SSHEX and has shown to have 10x the service life of current OEM rotary joints that we’ve seen leak in as little as 6 months. The HZ is also maintainable, so in the event that you do experience an issue, you only have to replace a few parts, not the entire joint. The HZ is competitively priced and stocked in Schaumburg, IL.
If you have any questions about the HZ Swivel joint or any of our industry leading products and services, please contact a Triplex Sales Engineer today!
