Extrusion International 1-2024

36 Extrusion International 1/2024 PROCESSING – INTERVIEW Pellet Vision – Constant Pellet Quality – Forever! The technology leader in underwater pelletizing has been regularly providing innovative advances in the industry for decades. This time, the focus was on process stability through intelligent systems. Pellet Vision is a system for evaluating pellet quality that has already been proven on the market under production conditions. Shape deviations can be detected immediately and corrective measures can be taken. The gain in stability and cost reduction can also be retrofitted on existing systems. An Interview with C-level management of the ECON group What was the development approach for the Pellet Vision? Gerhard Hehenberger (CEO) : Customer-oriented in- novation is ECON's top priority. With the first presenta - tion of the Pellet Vision in 2019, we already emphasized our visionary approach towards automatic and self- optimizing underwater pelletizing (UWP) several years ago. In the meantime, we have further developed the system to series production readiness and it is already being used very successfully by some customers. Can you explain the operating principle in a few words? Dominik Neumann (Head of R&D) : Simply put, the pellets produced are matched with the shape and size of the target pellets. However, since no suitable soft- ware is available on the market for our purposes, we have developed software and algorithms for evaluating the pellet quality ourselves. In detail, this means that the shape and size of the pellets in the production pro- cess are randomly compared (e.g. every 10 min) with a target pellet. Deviations are detected statistically and then a warning and visualization are transmitted to any interface (HMI of the UWP, HMI of the extruder, at the process control station, etc). What customer benefits does the system offer? Stefan Schedlik (CTO) : By detecting changes in pel- let geometry early, our customers achieve a stable and consistent pellet quality while minimizing off-spec material. Since Pellet Vision also detects the cause of changes, such as process fluctuations in the upstream area, the machine operator can intervene in a targeted and time-saving manner. In the direction of fully au- tomated systems, personal sampling is also no longer necessary. Incidentally, the Pellet Vision can also be retrofitted on existing systems. Gerhard Hehenberger (CEO) Dominik Neumann (Head of R&D) Stefan Schedlik (CTO) Gerhard Hemetsberger (CSO)