Background
A large customer in Germany produces organic sweets and has a need to sieve the fine sugar needed in the production. The customer was using a bucket conveyor, and had long downtime due to cleaning and difficulties to make sure all the buckets were clean. This is a procedure that they had to perform every day as the sugar absorbs moisture. As the customer was working with food they had a requirement that the solution would meet FDA and EC NO.1935/2004. Additionally, a bucket conveyor is a rigid construction, requiring a lot of floor space, and is inflexible for variations in factory layout.
Solution
Piab performed some tests with the customer and concluded that the best solution was the piFLOW®f vacuum conveyor with the 600 piBASIC vacuum pump along with a feed station. It reaches a capacity of 2 tons/hrs. Today's procedure is to empty the sacks into the feed station that is connected to the piFLOW®f conveyor that moves the sugar vertically 6 meters and then 4 meters horizontally.
Result
The process is now automated and due to less downtime for cleaning, the customer achieves a capacity increase of 30%. As an extra bonus, the customer got a solution requiring less space, and is more flexible for changes in factory layout.
