COOLING OF A FLUID BY MEANS OF PHASE TRANSITION HEAT SINKS

Areaderma is a cosmetic company in Trentino that has been producing cosmetics for third parties and class I and IIA medical devices for more than 30 years[1]. The research and development team is constantly looking for new technologies, cutting-edge methodologies, modern raw materials and new formulative solutions to provide to customers. Areaderma aims at the environmental sustainability of its business. In this regard, to reduce more and more the energy consumption, the company would like to change the technology used to cool products during processing. For the current process, the company uses machines where the heating is obtained by heating elements immersed in the reactor tank, while cooling is achieved by circulating cold water in an insulated cavity surrounding the tanks where the product is processed. In addition to being energy-intensive, the cooling phase takes a long time. The goal, therefore, is to be able to optimize times and reduce energy consumption during this phase of processing, switching to a modular setup, capable of processing an emulsion in standardized quantity over a fixed time range. This will allow the possibility to process several different types of products in the same working shift. The idea is to use a removable tank for each different product so that cleaning and maintenance operations can be done offline while the setup is processing the next batch in the sequence.