SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Vinyl record production has finally joined the modern age
Viryl has developed a first-in-the-industry: A steamless system [for creating vinyl records] that will make massive boilers and piping systems a thing of the past. Not only does it obviate some of the costs and permits previously involved, but it also becomes a more environmentally friendly process. Vinyl record pressing has finally bootstrapped itself into the modern age on all counts and stands to encourage new pressing plants to support vinyl's resurgent popularity.
Traditionally, the molds used to stamp out vinyl discs are heated by steam which is delivered to the press from a boiler. Viryl's steamless module electrically heats water to the desired 285 degrees Fahrenheit so the molds can melt pucks of PVC into a record. This new method of heating, removes gas, the boiler and extensive plumbing from the equation.
This new setup is a closed system that can live right next to the press, allowing for a smaller footprint in your workspace. It also reduces water waste, although you'll still need cooling lines. One of the biggest factors here, though, is that no boiler means none of the treatment chemicals used to keep a boiler in working order, so the environment wins. A setup that requires less square footage could also make Viryl's new presses a more attractive solution when space is limited or at a premium. Existing customers luck out as well, since it's possible to retrofit presses with the new option.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @07:41PM (1 child)
Electrically heating the water is probably less efficient than how the boiler was heated previously. It will vary depending on the boiler being replaced and the power plant providing the electricity.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 06 2018, @11:27PM
Almost certainly so - heat is the energy wastebasket of the universe, it's the one thing you can generate with 100% efficiency. Every other energy conversion process has various efficiency losses, with that energy being lost as (you guessed it) heat. If the electricity is generated from heat (as is generally the case), then you probably only convert around 30-40% of it to electricity, and lose even more in transmission.
However, if generating heat isn't actually the goal, then you can potentially "cheat" and make the whole system more efficient, even if the heating process is less so. In this case the goal is melting PVC pucks, the steam is only a heat-transfer mechanism - so you can probably get away with heating a much smaller amount of water much closer to where the heat is used, and thus have a *lot* less surface area losing heat. Probably not enough to overcome the hideous conversion losses in generating electricity though.
But then, it sounds like the goal isn't energy efficiency so much as space-, cost-, and risk-efficiency.