Hydration Technology Technical Article: Maxcess

02.10 components WATCH
High tech
at low speed
Hydration Technology’s web-guiding, tension-control
makeover fine-tunes its water-filtration membrane
product for new applications in new markets.
I
By Editor in Chief Mark Spaulding
magine you’re the victim of a natural
disaster—an earthquake, a hurricane,
a flood. Now list the things you’ll
need to survive until help arrives.
Besides medical care, a source of safe,
drinkable water likely tops your checklist
of priorities. Fortunately, you and thousands of other survivors of natural disasters
have turned to the water-filtration products
of Hydration Technology Innovations LCC
(HTI). And those products are, in turn,
made possible by the Albany, OR-based
converter’s newly rebuilt and upgraded
casting and drying lines.
At the core of all HTI water filters is an
unusual forward-osmosis (FO), cellulosic
membrane capable of filtering water molecules out of any liquid (see “Anywater,
Anywhere” sidebar). The membrane,
manufactured through a custom-engineered
high-tech coating system, works similarly
to how a tree draws water from damp soil.
All contaminants are removed, even down
to viruses and bacteria.
“We just made an artificial tree root; basically it’s the same process,” explains Jack
Herron, HTI project engineer. “We just make
it in sheet form, instead of tiny fibers.”
From the ground up
The drying line
now uses a MAGPOWR
VERSATEC™ tension
control, C-Series clutch and a Fife
D-MAX web-guiding system.
20 www.convertingmagazine.com® FEBRUARY 2010
The brief history of Hydration Technology’s membrane production was punctuated by a devastating fire that destroyed the
manufacturing lines in March 2007. HTI
immediately began to build a new plant,
which presented the opportunity to not
only solve several web-handling problems
that had troubled the original lines but also
02.10
Specifics:
At the casting-line unwind are a Fife Kamberoller® steering guide, a Fife SE-22 infrared sensor (above) and a MAGPOWR “C” Series magnetic-particle clutch.
to fine-tune the finished product for
new applications to serve new end-use
markets. All components were delivered in late 2007, and approved membrane was once again being regularly
produced in September 2008.
Today, a 5,000-sq-ft plant houses
the separate membrane-casting and
drying lines as well as R&D facilities
to investigate new membrane materials. Conversion of membrane into finished products
(shown below),
including new
spiral-wound
filters in several configurations is handled in a larger
24,000-sq-ft
plant. Other
operations include raw-material slitting/rewinding, bagforming, RF-welding of pouches, manual filling/sealing
and final product quality control.
In its production, the membrane
begins as a cellulose polymer dissolved in a proprietary collection of
solvents. Using a standard coating
method, this solution is applied to
a back web, which may be either a
woven or wet-laid nonwoven fiber.
The ultra-thin, asymmetrical coating
is partly infused into the back web.
Finished rolls are transferred to the
drying line, where a non-volatile coating is applied to the web. Lastly, the
treated material is run through a convection dryer and rewound.
Slow and steady
wins the race
“It’s a very slow process and
a very high-value product,”
says Herron. So, as elsewhere
in converting, the challenge
is to get your tension control
and edge guiding to act really
fast to handle a super-fast
process, here it’s to get it to
back off enough and yet be
very precise. We needed stability at slow speeds, especially
HYDRATION TECHNOLOGY
INNOVATIONS LLC: Albany, OR
OPERATIONS: Forward-osmosis
filtration-membrane casting; coating/laminating; slitting/rewinding;
bag/pouchmaking; spiral-wound
membrane filter manufacturing
PLANT SIZES 5,000-sq-ft
casting facility; 24,000-sq-ft
converting facility
EMPLOYEES: 35
with a long length of very thin material
between unwind and rewind.”
Key to the smooth operation and
improved efficiency of the new lines
are several web-handling components
supplied by the Maxcess Intl. divisions
(www.maxcessintl.com) of Fife Corp.,
Tidland Corp. and MAGPOWR.
“We’re so slow that you could do a
pretty good job with manual web control, but you’d have to constantly tweak
it to make it work,” explains Steven W.
Peterson, HTI senior project engineer.
Manual guiding was good enough to
make rolls later converted in-house,
but HTI is now seeking to do highspeed, form-fill-seal product manufacturing and contract packaging. “If we
were going to make more of our spiralwound product, we needed better web
guiding,” he adds. “We had one very
skilled operator, but we couldn’t clone
him to do all manual guiding.”
At the casting-line unwind now are
a Fife Kamberoller® steering guide
(provides immediate lateral correction), a Fife SE-22 infrared sensor
FEBRUARY 2010 www.convertingmagazine.com® 21
02.10 components WATCH
(capable of sensing the porous back web) and a MAGPOWR “C” Series magnetic-particle clutch (driven the
opposite way to achieve the right amount of differential
speed with the motor). Overseeing these components are a
MAGPOWR Cygnus® web-tension control (allows adjustments using multifunction “smart keys” and a large backlit
display) and a Fife D-MAX Series web-guiding system
(pre-wired and pre-integrated for fast setup). The D-MAX
is said to provide even higher dynamic response than previous controllers and displays text, guiding nomenclature
and web-guide graphics on a 122 x 92 mm LCD.
Wrinkling had been a big issue with the membranecasting process because the web is typically only 3.5-mils
thick, Peterson says. The real struggle was with tension
control along the full length from unwind to rewind.
“ANYWATER, ANYWHERE”
VIA FORWARD OSMOSIS
Albany, OR-based converter Hydration Technology Innovations LLC’s unusual Forward Osmosis (FO) process for water
filtration can provide life-saving, drinkable water from the most
disgusting sources you can imagine (tire ruts, floodwaters,
ditches, stagnant ponds). Just ask some of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina or the US military personnel (above) that helped
them or thousands of other people hit by natural disasters…or
even some of the millions who live every day without a source of
safe, drinking water.
Manufactured on a custom low-speed, high-tech coating
line, the FO filtration membrane works similarly to the way
trees draw water from damp soil or how people absorb the
water they drink—by separating water molecules from nearly
any liquid. The water passes through but larger molecules
such as salts, proteins, viruses, bacteria and parasites are all
blocked. Much like Reverse Osmosis but instead of applying
high pressure to squeeze water from a solution, FO uses a
solution with high osmotic potential to draw water through the
membrane from a solution of low osmotic potential.
The company’s extensive line of personal-hydration products range from the HydroWell™ that filters up to 40 liters/day
down to the X-Pack™ that processes six liters. Most of the
products include sugar syrup to flavor the filtered water, which
is safe to drink but doesn’t necessarily taste very good without
a little help. The syrup is not just for flavoring, though. Its sugar
molecules provide the osmotic driving force for filtration, which
runs without the pumping pressure typical of Reverse Osmosis.
HTI is also working on its SAFE Infant Formula Pouch,™ a
way to reconstitute infant formula (using water filtered by the
FO membrane) via a low-cost, easy-to-use zippered pouch. At
the opposite end of the spectrum, the beta-tested HydroWell Village, which can produce 800 liters/day per membrane
bundle, will support small remote communities or be used in
disaster relief.
But drinking water is just the start. The FO filtration technology has applications for numerous industries such as oil
and gas exploration, food processing, algae biofuels, methane
digestion and pharmaceuticals. For example, filter elements
are being used to treat pitwater in natural-gas wells, eliminating the need to transport truckloads of water into and out of
remote energy-exploration areas.
22 www.convertingmagazine.com® FEBRUARY 2010
“We have one very skilled operator,
but we couldn’t clone him to do
all manual guiding.”
Steven Peterson
HTI Senior Project Engineer
“There’s a lot of festooning of the material in the casting
tanks, so you get some stretching, and the unwind and
rewind can start fighting with each other,” he explains.
“Maxcess worked with us on stabilizing those tension
fluctuations that gave us the wrinkling. It all works well
now. It’s pretty boring, but that’s a good thing.”
Unusual core-shaft combo
In HTI’s original plant, changing rolls was a slow,
complicated process that Peterson and Herron sought
to remedy with the new lines. The converter now uses
Tidland Series 800 GX ultra-lightweight aluminum shafts
and Boschert safety chucks throughout the two facilities’
unwinds and rewinds. An older Arrow slitter/rewinder
used to trim out-of-spec raw-material rolls prior to coating
has also been retrofitted with these components. “They
are very nice, inflatable bladder-type shafts, and we found
them to be very convenient,” Peterson says.
Because part of HTI’s membrane-casting process takes
place underwater, and the finished web must be kept moist,
the company’s roll cores are actually PVC piping. “Tidland
specified a shaft that could handle the loads we had and
still get good traction on wet PVC pipe,” Herron says.
Prior to full-production startup in September 2008,
HTI experienced some tension-control problems on its
drying line. Maxcess assisted with the MAGPOWR VERSATEC™ tension controller (uses an ultrasonic sensor to
measure distance and roll diameter) and retrofitting to a
larger C-Series MAGPOWR clutch. “These changes got
the line running smoothly,” Peterson says.
02.10
Above: Overseeing the casting-line web-handling components are a MAGPOWR Cygnus® web-tension control and a Fife D-MAX Series web-guiding
system. Top left: Uncoated substrate moves past HTI senior project engineer Steven Peterson in the casting-line area. Bottom left: Process operator Mike Flores checks the new web-handling controls on the casting line.
In early 2009, the D-MAX Series
web-guiding system and controller was added as well. HTI operators prefer the new components
because of their intuitive ease-ofuse. “It’s been a real, clean retrofit
after our startup,” Peterson says.
Experienced
extrapolation
Both he and Herron have high
praise for all the Maxcess Intl. engineers they worked with during the
casting and drying line rebuilds.
Because web-handling had been
totally manual in the past, using
only MAGPOWR clutches, very
little information was available
(mainly web widths and roll diameters) to help specify the proper
components and controls.
“We had been inventing the
whole [membrane-casting] process
as we went along,” Peterson says,
but the end result has been thoroughly successful.
What’s ahead for Hydration
Technology Innovations? With its
purchase in March 2009 by Scottsdale, AZ-based holding company
Innovations Management, plans for
a major boost in production capacity include designing a new membrane line to be sited nearby or in
the existing casting-line building. 
Editor’s Note: At presstime,
HTI was shipping its HydroPack
and HydroWell Village products to
Haiti as part of international earthquake relief efforts. The donated
supplies will provide at least 6,000
people with one liter of clean
drinking water each day.
MORE INFO:
CONVERTER:
HYDRATION TECHNOLOGY
INNOVATIONS LCC,
541/917-3335, www.htiwater.com
SUPPLIERS:
FIFE CORP., 800/639-3433, www.fife.com/ht
MAGPOWR, 800/639-3433, www.magpowr.com/ht
TIDLAND CORP., 800/426-1000,
www.tidland.com/ht
FEBRUARY 2010 www.convertingmagazine.com® 23