A heat treatment device for a PET bottle preform with an integral handle includes an air-cooling knife, a heating furnace, and a transport mechanism. The air-cooling knife is disposed on an outlet side of the heating furnace, the bottle preform is transported into the heating furnace through the transport mechanism, heated in the heating furnace, and transported to the air-cooling knife, and the air-cooling knife jets airflow to and cools a lower end of a handle of the bottle preform, appropriately reducing the temperature at junction of the lower end of the handle and a bottle body so that a gentle transition between the temperature of the bottle body and the temperature of the handle is achieved, and the handle is not easily deformed after the bottle preform is blown, thereby effectively improving the quality of the bottle preform after blown.

A thermal conditioning device for thermally conditioning preforms, comprising a heating module provided with an enclosure with a transport volume for said preforms; a heating means and a cooling means that are oriented toward the volume; a control means for controlling said heating and cooling means; said cooling means comprising a circulating means for circulating a flow of air with a nominal flow rate determined by said control means; a channel between said circulating means and said enclosure and leading toward said volume; wherein it comprises, along said channel, a measuring means for measuring the actual flow rate and an adjusting means for adjusting said nominal flow rate with respect to said actual flow rate, by controlling the control means. The invention also relates to a corresponding thermal conditioning method.

A plant for producing and treating containers includes a heating device having a plurality of heating elements for heating a preform transported through the heating device, a blow-molding machine downstream of the heating device for forming the preform into a container, and a container treatment machine downstream of the blow-molding machine for treating a container. The heating device, the blow-molding machine, and the container treatment machine are operable synchronously at different production speeds. The plant also includes a control unit which is configured to adjust a power of at least one of the heating elements depending upon a change in the production speed of the blow-molding machine or the container treatment machine such that a total heat quantity, supplied to a preform, in the heating device does not exceed a specified limit value.