Alfa Laval Kathabar – Consistently perfect

Meat, sausage and poultry

Liquid desiccant solutions

When your products live in the perfect environment, you get more consistency. That’s what our Kathabar technology does for the meat industry. These highly engineered, dry and liquid desiccant solutions give your products their ideal air quality, temperature and humidity.

With the perfect air, Kathabar technology helps you eliminate the need to defrost coils, creating consistently safe, high-quality products. And it does it all while reducing downtime, waste, and wear and tear, and increasing production and cost savings. 

Applications

  • Drying rooms
  • Slicing and cutting rooms
  • Freezers
  • Loading docks
  • Evisceration rooms
  • Holding coolers

How it works

The Alfa Laval Kathabar liquid desiccant dehumidification system operates on the principle of chemical absorption of water vapor from air. Our systems utilize a liquid absorbent known as Kathene.® Kathene solution is non-toxic, will not vaporize and is not degraded by common airborne contaminants.

The temperature and concentration of the solution determines the ability of Kathene to remove or add water vapor from the air. The concentration of Kathene can be adjusted so the conditioner delivers air at any desired relative humidity between 18% and 90%. For a given Kathene concentration, lower solution temperatures enable the conditioner to deliver cooler, dryer air.

The illustration below shows the basic elements of the liquid desiccant system. Conditioned air is cooled and dehumidified by contacting Kathene in the conditioner. By continuously circulating the desiccant through a heat exchanger, energy is extracted from the air and transferred to a coolant. The amount of heat extracted by the Alfa Laval Kathabar dehumidifier is modulated to exactly match the load ±1% by controlling coolant flow through the heat exchanger.

Advantages

Improve product quality

  • Prevent condensation on building, equipment and product
  • Cleaner process air
  • Eliminate mold and bacteria

Production advantages

  • Quickly dry floors after washdown
  • Consistent environments for multiple drying and processing rooms
  • Precise humidity control to +/- 1% RH

Energy advantages

  • Reduce utility consumption through simultaneous air cooling and dehumidification
  • Reduce refrigeration tonnage with frost-free cooling
  • Use low grade energy sources for humidity control