Moist summer days can be disastrous to confectionery manufacturing operations. Candy packaging equipment clogs, chocolates blush and pan coatings 'pick'. These annoyances can reduce your profits, interrupt your production and cause severe quality problems. Munters desiccant dehumidifiers can produce extra-dry air regardless of the weather. This insulates your operation from the effects of summer humidity and allows your product to be uniformly excellent all year round.

Why Dehumidify?

Faster Pan Coating
Faster Cooling Tunnels
No Enrober Skirting
Faster Candy Packaging
Fewer Storage Losses
Improved Sanitation

Conventional Humidity Control

Some confectionery operations rely on conventional, refrigeration-based air conditioning systems to control humidity. Such systems have advantages, including low installed cost and relatively favorable operating economics.

Refrigeration-based humidity control is especially effective when the humidity level needs to be quite high - such as fruit and vegetable storage which requires a 95% relative humidity to avoid product moisture loss. It is also useful when there is a great deal of product cooling to be done, such as freezing fish or other products sensitive to dehydration.

On the other hand, in confectionery processing, the more common task is to remove water from a product - as in pan coating, or to prevent reabsorbtion of moisture - as in hard candy packaging and cold storage. Both of these situations call for low relative humidities, which are somewhat awkward for a refrigeration-based system to produce.

To produce low relative humidities, the refrigeration system must first cool the air, removing moisture by condensation. Since the air is essentially saturated - 100% relative humidity - when it leaves the cooling coil, it must be reheated to have a low relative humidity.

While this technology works effectively at high temperatures and moisture levels, it becomes very inefficient when it must produce the low humidity required for confectionery manufacturing. This means large, expensive and complex systems that are difficult to maintain.

A refrigeration system is also limited in how dry it can make the air, because as the coil attempts to cool the air below 32°F, the condensed moisture freezes and the coil must stop cooling in order to defrost.

If your process requires both low temperatures and low humidities - such as a pan coating line - the refrigeration system may produce erratic results, particularly in the summertime when both temperature and moisture are at their maximum.

The Munters Improvement

Munters dehumidifiers remove moisture by attracting it from the air into a desiccant rather than by condensation. Since the water is removed as a vapor, the process is not limited by the freezing of condensate - so it can produce very dry conditions regardless of how cold the air must be.

Now your pan coating supply air can be 40°F and 20% relative humidity rather than close to 100% RH - which represents a 300% increase in moisture removal capacity.

Storage warehouses can operate comfortably at 50% RH even at 32°F without the need for wasteful overcooling and re-heating. This means your inventory carrying costs are reduced significantly.

Munters units can also be easily added to your existing air conditioning systems upstream of the main cooling coils. This lets you maintain a productive 40% RH level in the plant instead of the 65% levels - typical of refrigeration - that allow moisture re-absorbtion on candy surfaces.

Each confectionery plant has its own unique requirements. Munters can accommodate your needs, even if your requirement only calls for a seasonal solution.