Advertising Feature - Cover Story
feeds peanut, almond and other nut products to an industrial line, which processes materials and fills pails or barrels. Two others, 7.5 m long, convey raw product to the processing equipment, which processes the material into product that is eventually placed in jars for retail sale.
Sanitising these conveyors has proven less time consuming. A removable clean-out cap at the intake end of the conveyor tube allows for both reversing of the screw to evacuate any residual material and removal of the flexible screw for sanitising and flushing of the conveyor tube, in just 45 minutes. This compares to two hours for the bucket-style conveyors. The flexible screw conveyors consist of a stainless steel spiral inside an enclosed tube driven by an IP65 motor located at the discharge end. MaraNatha specified other food-grade features including stainless steel hoppers and flexible screws. The manager says the simple design and operation of the equipment outperforms the bucket-style conveyors it replaced. An improved output of 150 jars per minute from the new system compares 20 to 30 jars with the old one.
The BFC unloaders in the facility are configured with cantilevered I-beams with electric hoists and trolleys for loading and unloading bulk bags without a forklift.
The two unloaders in the roasting rooms are equipped with Spout-Lock clamp rings that make an air-tight connection between the clean side of the bag spout and the clean side of the equipment, preventing contamination of the product and plant environment. The clamp rings are located at the top of Tele-Tube telescoping tubes that maintain constant downward tension of the bag spout to promote complete evacuation of the
ABOVE: A flexible screw conveyor discharges raw nuts through a transition adapter and downspout into the main process mill LEFT: Roasted cashew pieces in hopper flow into the flexible screw conveyor’s intake adapter, and are conveyed to the grinding process
bag as it empties and elongates. Immediately above the clamp rings are pneumatically actuated Power-Cincher flow control valves that cinch the bag spouts concentrically, allowing retying of partially empty bags with no leakage of the nut fines used in MaraNatha’s operation.
The three unloaders in the production room utilise conventional iris valves instead of the clamp rings and telescoping tubes described above because a sealed connection between the bag spout and the hopper is unnecessary. To operate, the bag outlet spout is pulled through the open iris valve, the valve is closed, the bag spout drawstring is untied, and the access door is closed. The valve is then opened slowly to prevent uncontrolled bursts of material into the hopper, reducing the escape of dust. From the original 1300 m2
building they now have 4180 m2 in
three buildings, a warehouse in a neighbouring town and a distribution centre in Northern California. The new equipment helped them achieve this growth by improving output five-fold due to the ease of cleaning and more efficient performance. For more information contact Flexicon (Europe) on tel: +44 (0) 1227 374 710 or visit:
www.flexicon.co.uk
www.solidsandbulk.co.uk August 2010 • Solids & Bulk Handling 9
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